Category: Tales from the front lines

  • 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,…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • But baby it’s cold inside

    58 degrees F is the new 72° Have to confess, the indentured servants here at Stately Blaska Manor will be disappointed if we don’t get the six to ten inches of snow predicted overnight through Sunday 11-30-25. We’re demented that way. Would think that the threat (or promise?) of the first heavy snowfall of the…

  • 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.…

  • Happy Labor Day, wage slaves!

    Where is that pic-a-nic basket? Think we’ll do a picnic in Olin Park on the shores of Lake Monona today. Haven’t done a picnic since … forever. Growing up, dad would pile the tribe into the red & white Chevy Nomad station wagon, mom would pack the hamper, and we’d drive a couple miles east…