Category: Tales from the front lines
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Memorial Day is for thanking
Better late than never. Like probably every son who ever lived, Blaska wishes he had told his old man that he didn’t do such a bad job after all (although some may differ). We knew he was on his way out but he never complained except to say, “Nothing seems to be working right.” My…
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A place where everybody knows your name
Breaking up is hard to do. RIP: Neil Sedaka. It was terrible, bad, and awful news. Sofra’s restaurant in Middleton WI was closing, your irascible host learned while seated at his usual place near the front window facing the entrance on Elmwood Avenue. Always the same seat in the same place, Thursday mornings at 7:30. Routine,…
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Death was big news in small towns
‘The call of the Grim Reaper has again been heard in our midst‘ The Lovely Lisa is lobbying this scribbler to compose his obituary. Was it something we said? Our interest piqued, we plunged into the Sun Prairie Historical Society’s archive of obituaries, a great source of history. Struck by the attention paid to manner…
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Look out for journalists
Sometimes they take the law into their own hands! At the age of 7, Blaska became the editor and publisher of The Blaskie Paper, the leading journal of BugTown. A map of the imaginary country resembled the platbook’s rectangular delineation of our farm east of Sun Prairie WI. The publication took its name from the…
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Is this all there is?
Should we keep dancing? A writer we very much admire faulted my old boss, Tommy Thompson, a man of generous spirit, for championing Donald Trump, a single-minded settler of scores. The writer ascribed the seeming paradox to the former governor’s bid, at age 84 and out of office these 20 years, to remain relevant. Relevance.…