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Memorial Day Reflection
It’s a cool, sunny afternoon. The lawn has just been neatly mowed by hard-working, reliable people who use power mowers. We used to mow lawns at previous properties using old-time reel mowers. I should say my wife used to do the lion’s share of that while I was at the hospital, working as a consulting…
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Crazy Like a Fox
I finally got a picture of a fox not far from our property—but not close enough to get a good image. That said, it led me to do a little reading on the web about foxes. The most interesting item is the idea foxes might be able to locate prey under deep snow by using…
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COVID-19 Long Haul: Pizza in the Pan Again?
I remember a scene in the 1979 movie The Jerk, starring Steve Martin as Navin. He was telling Marie (played by Bernadette Peters) about pizza in a cup. They were both eating pizza in a cup. At the time, this was funny because it was ludicrous to think of pizza being served in a cup.…
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Hey, How About Them Nielsen Surveys?
Hey, how ‘bout them Nielsen’s surveys? I can’t remember getting any Nielsen media rating surveys before I retired and I’ve gotten two of them since then. They send you a crisp, new dollar bill in the mail to entice participation. More likely, it elicits guilt. You’d return the dollar bill but not in the mail,…
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Busy as a Beaver
I’m probably busy as a beaver, especially now that I’ve read a short description of how a beaver builds a dam. The article is short on references; in fact, there are none to back up the unidentified author’s remarks. In fact, I suspect the article is fact-free, the only apparent purpose to create test questions…
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Reflection on James Alan McPherson’s “A Solo Song: For Doc”
I’ve been reading the short story collection Hue and Cry by James Alan McPherson with the idea that the entire book was new to me. So, I was stunned when I remembered the story, “A Solo Song: For Doc.” It has more than one layer of meaning, but on one level it’s about a Black…
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Imagination Lives in Oakland Cemetery
We don’t usually make trips to Oakland Cemetery (or any cemetery for that matter), but today we made an exception to find the grave of James Alan McPherson, the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and longtime Iowa Writers’ Workshop faculty who died in 2016 and for whom an Iowa City…
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Walk the James Alan McPherson Park
Yesterday, Sena and I visited the James Alan McPherson Park. The Iowa City Council renamed it in his honor last month; it was formerly called Creekside Park. There were compelling reasons for the name change. He was the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his collection of short stories, Elbow…
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Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Dollar Bill Jump Challenge
I’ve got one thing in common with a lot of people who say they’ve seen things like Bigfoot and UFOs. I’ve seen someone beat the Dollar Bill Jump Challenge but I can’t prove it. I know there are a lot of people who say they’ve seen the Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, little gray aliens, Sasquatch,…
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Reflecting on Ironies
Over the Easter weekend, we drove by James Alan McPherson Park. A lot of people were having a great time. Because it was crowded, we went to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area, planning to return another day. We just got our copy of McPherson’s Pulitzer Prize winning fiction anthology, Elbow Room. We’ve ordered his other collection…
