CUL-DE-SAC

I was living in Iowa City with my family when I was age 8 (I think) and my parents took my brother and me to a flea market. There was a sketch artist, earning a few bucks drawing portraits of people. My parents sat their boys down and the artist drew. I don’t know where that drawing [...]

It started with an argument between me and my wife. The argument wasn’t too strident, but it was enough for her to accuse me have having a “tone” in my voice. I didn’t have a tone! Whatever. The subject related to one I blogged about following Super Bowl Sunday: My sentimentality for Normal Heights, our old neighborhood. [...]

Training. It’s something you have to endure sometimes if you’re a member of the professional classes and your employer has a training budget. I’ve worked in my business for more than 20 years, yet I had to be trained last week. I work in public radio and I have taken over a job that involves [...]

Super Bowl Sunday came and went and I never turned on my TV. I have said that I will watch the Super Bowl only if I have absolutely nothing better to do. Sunday, I had nothing else to do and I still didn’t watch it. It wasn’t because I didn’t like either of the teams. [...]

There was nothing wrong with the address. The handwriting was perfectly fine. It was a letter sent to Santa Claus at the North Pole. But my son’s thank-you note to Santa was labeled “Return to Sender.” Since getting the letter back, I’ve wondered what could have gone wrong. Maybe Santa is in the Bahamas by [...]

The church pews at St. Didacus were half-filled with parents and seven and eight-year-olds who waited as three priests sat at the front and took confessions. The church now calls it reconciliation. But it’s first confession. My daughter waited her turn as the little kids spoke softly to the priests who leaned forward to hear [...]

I walk a mile from home to grocery shop, and my destination is an acre of parking lot at College Ave and El Cajon Blvd that’s lined with a strip mall that’s anchored by a Von’s grocery store. The approach takes me past things I’ve seen over and over: A boxing gym that’s sometimes full and [...]

I have lived my entire life in towns and cities. That means the animals I’ve come across have been either pets or wild animals that adapt to urban landscapes. Food has come from a grocery store and I’ve never owned livestock. That changed when I got chickens. It was my wife’s idea, and she thoroughly investigated the topic as she [...]

Not long ago, I blogged about my disappointment over the removal of Finax Swedish Rye Bread from the store shelves of IKEA. (“Curse IKEA,” Sept. 26, 2011) And I got quite a few comments on that post. In fact, more commented on that than on anything else I’ve written. Shortly after Christmas I got this [...]

Whenever I spend time with this blog, I keep the company of my computer and of others who are bound to their computers. This means I do my best to ignore the living, breathing people in my household. It makes me think of a story my sister-in-law once told of an academic family she knew. On a [...]