It’s called schadenfreude, a descriptive term for the satisfaction that wells up when someone else suffers misfortune. Confession: I felt schadenfreude while viewing the evening news’ depiction of the massive shoreline destruction, the result of the moon’s near orbit, of a high tide and the storm surge of hurricane Nicole’s wind lashed waves….
Just a few days more until Halloween. It is raining now. We’ve yet a hard frost here in the Fox River Valley. The trick or treat experience for children depends upon the weather. Adults hope that the evening will be without inclement weather and not too cold. It is late October after all. More…
Halloween. On the eve of October 31st, the sun sets and sidewalks are transformed by children dressed in costumes of all descriptions, even adults embellished with face paint, – to celebrate a festival of ghosts, goblins, a few hours of zany merriment. Adults are allowed to give expression to the inner child, to participate…
Friday, another “end” of the work-week. But this Friday is incomparable to any other that has ever been… The Starbucks room here at 3rd and State contains a configuration of individuals, various, by socio-economic status, or by the arc of a standard lifetime, a group of high school students, and I, a retiree… Never…
Fall sunrise over the Fox River is glorious. I think it worth rising for the brief spectacle just before 7AM. This is the view through my windshield traveling on Fabyan Parkway east toward Starbucks in Geneva. The sunlight is a gift to every living thing, trees, shrubs, grasses and the squirrels that inhabit the…
Well what was your visit to “the Grove” like? I mean your plans to spend Saturday afternoon at the Great Lakes Dragaway? I was not disappointed. In retrospect I received more than the fee paid for admission. The hours spent walking around the pits, lingering for a few minutes to chat with the Lumbert…
A fall Saturday is overcast. I plan to make my way to the drag strip perhaps for a last hurrah. There’s a chill in the air. Soon time will be past for “test and tune” of race cars, hand-built expressions of the personality of an owner, and that of crew members, who are likely…
Yesterday was Labor Day, a national holiday. Many businesses were closed, as the intention is to celebrate the “working man.” This is ironic. Those who labor behind the scenes, stocking the shelves, sorting records, expediting those customer orders flowing into Amazon warehouses across the country, — orders promised for next day delivery… Those who…
You did what? You went where? Once again you spent a Saturday afternoon at a drag strip? Why? What’s the attraction? I’d have to say that the quarter mile drag strip, 1,320 feet of two lane asphalt is one of the last sane places, where men go to war. Surely you are kidding, making…
What is it about machinery, the proximity of forged, of cast metal, that combination of fire and steel of a machine that has shaped the male psyche of my generation? Will I always fail to do justice to the attraction of the symmetry, the “magic” of artifice, — which strikes home to the male…
