It is the Winter Solstice. In the cold we huddle around the fire, joined in our communities. At the dark time of year, when...

This picture was on a birthday card I received last week. It is a real photo of Rolland “Rollie” Free setting the...

To tell you the truth, I’m exhausted. I mean, I did manage to hold my pee till first light, and that seemed to make my man...

The roots of a love affair When I was a pre-teen, I read a book about Doug, an American teenager immersed in hot rod...

First Love My first girlfriend was named Coke, not what you’re thinking. We weren’t fifteen year-old white powder fiends....

At the Therapist “How has the week gone?” “I don’t know. . . . not going well. . . I’ve been quite anxious. . . can’t get...

Maynard and me Maynard G. Krebs, pictured above, was the sidekick character in The Many Loves of Doby Gillis, the 1959-63...

“I seek dead people” My wife is an amateur genealogist. She spends her retirement researching her extended, extended...

The trail began in a yellow green wood. “Don’t get your feet wet!” My mother admonished as I leaped across a trickle-stream...

“Fred?” “Yes, Shishya?” “Why, do you live here?” “Ah, Shishya, the mountains are a transition between earth and sky. How...

The Trial I was called for jury duty three times in two years always in spring or fall consulting busy-season. “So just...

He bore the name of the Prophet. We had a little difficulty meeting. I was not in the place he expected me to be and the...

Jake and Wil save German culture The “Little Corporal” was ruining everything. Napoleon Bonaparte abolished the feudal...

Stuff Needs Fixing The lamp is twelve years old. It was a gift from a family member because it went with our last house, an...

The LinkedIn Wisdom Elders I’m connected on LinkedIn to several men about my age or a little older who write posts like I...

The joke is on me There is a joke I first heard in my teenage years. Like a lot of jokes it is hard to make work in written...

Poor Oedipus Born in Thebes, Oedipus was left to die on a mountaintop because a seer told Laius and Jocasta, his parents,...

The Day After Christmas When I was growing up in 1950s New England, the day after Christmas was a recovery day. Kids played...

 House of Cards We send holiday cards. My list includes people I’m only in contact with once a year so I usually include a...

Kid stuff I’ve been reading Aesop’s Fables. Most of us read some of Aesop’s stories as children: the conceited hare so...

A Rant I’m not really a rant-kinda-guy, no really, I’m not. . . Whined the wishy-wash writer-wrestling with what the...

I wrote a rant to post this week. Then Dennis reposted a BizCat article I wrote six months ago where I was genuinely asking...

I already wrote about my strange obsession with the Celts, a European Bronze Age and Iron Age people  dominant between 700...

Will, Marne, and Surance When William Wehn was younger he left his parents farm. Will was the third son and knew his...

The first math problem. My parents were married for sixty-seven years. They got married in the depths of the Great...

Celt-crazy after all these years I’m not sure when I became fascinated by the Celts, the Bronze and Iron Age people, who...

Ancient History “Oh Wow!” Human beings have gotten cricks in our necks staring at the night sky for a long time. The...

Acme Grand Opening It was a sunny spring Saturday and I was on a roll. When I worked, Saturdays were all about errands and...

A conversation It was a story I heard more than once. Different people told the story often making a slightly different...

Eeeyou! That is how many people react to bugs. They’re disgusting, disease-spreading, creepy-crawly creatures. Perhaps the...

July 4th - US Independence Day Amid the fireworks and cookouts, Ferris wheels, cotton candy and win-a-stuffie pellet-gun...

I call myself a writer now. Sometimes words flow like a river; sometimes they are dammed up. Not elegantly locked behind a...

“I hope I die before I get old” Well, that didn’t happen. Not for me nor for Pete Townshend, who wrote that song for The...

My First: Tank My first summer at Oyster Harbors Caddy Camp I was thirteen. I was slow to learn and reluctant to work, but...

My haircutter history When a was a curly tow headed two-year-old my hair drew a lot of attention. I’m told I was not happy...

“I’m going to be a big brother” My son and his bride are anticipating the birth of their second child. With their first,...

Maybe The fourth time the disembodied phone-tree voice said “Please give me the phone number on the account” and I...

“He was only ever interested in music and the transfer of energy, which he considered the same thing.” This is a line...

Leonardo and me About five years ago I read Walter Isaacson’s biography Leonardo da Vinci. I remember buying it for my...

Don’t take it personally, Alan. Now that I am three quarters of a century old, I get a little testy at this time of year....

Deep Winters Night Green long ago departed the hardwood leaves now brown-skittering across the threshold in the white wind....

“Eeeeeeerip” “Did you hear that?” “Yeah, I think it was my foot moving that chair.” “Oh. Good ‘cause I thought it. . .”...

I Dare You I quit smoking cigarettes on a dare when I was twenty-seven. My then wife and I were playing Risk with our...

Yep, 75. I have now reached the age that when I die, no one will say “He was so young!” I’m in the third phase of life...

“Gotta work a rabbit’s foot” That’s what my father said when he hung strips of aluminum foil from his tomato plants to keep...

Going to the Circus “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Please turn your attention high above the center ring . . . Hush. . .” "High...

Artifacts of "The Boy" When I cleaned out my parents’ house I discovered that my mother saved everything that had any...

Learning to juggle In my early forties, I decided to learn how to juggle. I asked for the book Juggling for the Complete...

“Read line 6. . . . pretty good!” “Now the left, Line 4. . . 6. . .  9. . .13. . . Read that again. . . are there hawks in...

“Oh, will you grow up!” I heard this a lot as a boy, especially from my two older sisters. Perhaps to counter their...

“That’s just WRONG!” I was stunned. Twenty-one and newly married, I was living with a member of the opposite sex who wasn’t...

Joy bursts from a neo-being and is absorbed and amplified by an adoring ancestor. Later, the child hangs on the parent’s...

Raymond J. Culler, my father, gave me my first pocketknife when I was 11 years old. He said that his father told him at...

 What is wisdom? Knowledge? Skill? I don't think all knowledge or skill qualifies as wisdom, but perhaps it is the kind of...

A New York management consultant was feeling lost. He didn’t understand life anymore. He could no longer speak with...