Point Made

I have said it too many times. I usually say it to people younger than I am, but than that demographic is pretty big and growing. "Don't get old it's a waste of time." Self-serving? No doubt. Easy to say, difficult to do? Of course. I think of how I reacted to my elders, and there is little doubt I'm getting some payback that I've earned. Were my elders wise to the level of suspending critical thinking? Not at all. My elders were "The Greatest Generation." A short description might sound like; "We won World War II." Becuase of this, we know some stuff you haven't learned. So just follow these instructions and you'll be fine. You should finish high school, volunteer for the military, come home marry the girl next door and move down the block, so we can enjoy our grandchildren. Sunday dinner at Mom's is compulsory. Drive whatever your dad drives because he knows better and you don't want to be driving something above your ...

If you talk about nothing but the weather in our fair state, eventually you'll hear something like, "Yeah, it's a nice day, but you know we're going to pay for it down the line." It's the rock-solid belief that if you enjoy something you'll pay for it with an equal amount of misery. A win on the field, (You pick the sport and the team) and it's payback for years of misery or watching for the misery to come. Some might think it's a charming holdover from a culture that doesn't like braggarts and self-promoters. Garrison Keillor once said it was the Luthern mindset that there is no joy in life just the pain we feel from trying to find it. With that in mind, I suggest that there is no force in nature that is charged with evening the scales. Making sure for instance, that for every eighty-degree day that occurs in September there will be a horribly cold day in October. Yeah, you just wait. One thing we know about the weather in Wisconsin. It wil...

Normally, during the 120 days of possible good weather in Wisconsin, we get the buffet version of climate variations. You know? I little of this and a little of that. This week while Florida got its backside handed to it, we sat in our short shirt sleeves and watched our Green Bay Packers hammer the Seattle Seahawks. In a game that demonstrated the value of linemen on both sides of the ball, we prevailed. The short shirt sleeve weather we experienced at Lambeau is hanging in for the entire week. WhoHah! R eport on the pile of boxes that mocks us every time we try to relax. Maria and unpacked and were predictably surprised at what we found in the boxes. We rearranged. We went out for breakfast. We paid to sit in a theater to watch a Rom-Com, (Home Again, with Reese Witherspoon). And when all is said and done, we created enough room for the car in the garage. WhoHah! Note: For Rom Com, Home Again wasn't that bad. It was kind of like putting down my copy of the Atlantic and pic...

It's not Fall yet, I keep reminding myself as Maria, and I motor through the Wisconsin countryside. However, I continue my interior dialogue, when the "color" does start its migration South, we have to repeat this trip. For a confirmed Urbanite, I've had spent a considerable amount of my life in the country. My industrial sales career may have kept me from joining the Rotary, Lions or Junior Chamber of Commerce because my travel schedule, but I could have written a book about small town dinners and supper clubs. That is until Micky D's, and the chain brass and fern restaurant's closed a lot of them down. Country roads are still picturesque and frothing with nostalgic views of dairy farms and that hint of the way things used to be. In between the still occupied farm houses and out buildings, there are new homes ranging from McMansions to factory built double wide mobile homes. I spotted a beat up old bicycle sitting in a yard leaning against a tree surrounded...