Opinion

I’ve heard a lot about the owl “irruption” in Northern Minnesota and so on my recent trip to “up north”, I was excited at the prospect of seeing the owls that live in the boreal forest in Canada visiting Minnesota.

Moving out of an apartment as I’ve been doing recently convinces me at last to resign from American consumer culture and live with only bedding, one towel, two changes of clothing, a pair of shoes, and one suit to wear for shows and also to be buried in. Stationery, stamps, and a couple pens. I own 21 coffee cups; I only need one. Nothing plastic, thank you. I will still fly Delta but I’ll lose 25 pounds to lessen the load.

“The only measure that he knows is desire—desire for power.” — Gandalf

I recently wrote about my cursed attempts at booking stays while traveling. I’d had a snafu with my most recent attempt, accidentally initially booking a cabin an hour away from where I was supposed to be, as it had the same name as a location in the town I was supposed to stay.

Most aphorisms are self-evident, such as “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush” and the one about glass houses and throwing stones and the mice playing when the cat is away and “As you sow, so shall you harvest” and as I get older, the ones about living in the moment and seizing the day and not crying over spilt milk feel very profound.

When one tends to cover a lot of events for their job (me - I’m talking about the newspaper), it also gives one the opportunity to then attend such events.

Some people come at you with this gem. “I don’t mean to brag but…” What they’re really saying is, “Personally, I’d rather avoid celebrating me–philanthropist/all-around great guy/unsung hero–but circumstances make it untenable for me not to disclose the following information.”

Today we will consider words. Words are the building blocks of language. People use words for all kinds of reasons. People use words to convey ideas and emotions, to connect to other human beings, and to navigate, shape, and understand the world. It’s like I always meant to say: Words is good, man.

I got to spend last week in California, seeing people, doing things, from Irvine up to Sacramento, and people kept trying to get me to go with them to vineyards, though I no longer imbibe. I used to and then about 25 years ago I stopped. I am capable of idiocy on my own without adding intoxication to it. And I had a two-year-old daughter and I didn’t want her to see me drunk. She and I love silliness, which is a whole other matter.

I’m notoriously bad at booking hotel rooms, Air BNBs and all things related. It’s become rather like a running joke in my family at this point that no matter how hard I try to read reviews, etc, there is always something that I manage to mess up.