What Would Grandpa Do?

June 11, 2025–Maybe the solution to all our so-called modern problems is this: Live like your great grandparents lived. Not literally, but metaphorically. Recently our power went off and it got me to thinking again about how our ancestors coped. Let’s just go back 150...

First sip

Mar 19, 2025 Feels like the first time. Foreigner Everyone seeks pleasure. It is the one desire shared by every human being. Pleasure is so desirable we go to extreme lengths to obtain it. Seeking pleasure in a destructive manner with drugs is called addiction. With...

Prohibition

Dec 11, 2024–A recent kerfuffle about changing a street to one-way caused unanticipated effects at adjacent intersections, brought to mind other blanket declarations with unexpected and opposite consequences. In 1918 pure prairie leagues and women’s temperance unions...

Keeping Up With the Thagstroms

May 8, 2024–Being invited to a dinner party is like entering Carnegie Hall–you are expected to be the audience or the performer. For some of us, either is a burden. I’ve thought about this a lot. Why do most normal people enjoy dining at someone else’s home, while...

Questions

April 10, 2024–One of our kids’ favorite family activities was responding to The Kids’ Book of Questions, by Gregory Stock. It was a collection of 260 open-ended questions with answers you could not find in any book. Rather, they posed moral dilemmas, what-ifs, and...