Category: Tales from the front lines

  • 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…

  • Kill the wascals, kill the wascals 🎵

    We will not be species shamed! News break! Blaska’s Experimental Work Farm (and Penal Colony) is being overrun by chipmunks. The industrious rodents (about 8 inches long) are multiplying like Tucker’s conspiracy theories — eating our garden beans as they sprout. If past is prologue, the voracious critters will take a bite out of every…

  • R.I.P. David Blaska (some day)

    May God have mercy on this blog. Can’t explain it but as the Squire ages more funerals seem to populate his calendar. We take Yogi Berra’s guidance: if we don’t go to their funerals they won’t come to ours. Got us obsessing about Life’s Last Picture Show.  Impressed by the turnout at Dennis O’Loughlin’s visitation…

  • Give spring a chance

    What a day for a daydream! Daylight Savings Time sure picked the right time to start. What a day to be out and about this 9th of March in a Madison WI that warmed up to 61° F. We heard birds singing this morning as we scraped Sunday’s newsprint off the driveway. The lovely Lisa…

  • Two funerals in two days

    Wasn’t that a Hugh Grant movie? Said goodbye Wednesday 01-08-25 to a grade school and high school classmate, Leo Schneider. Both of us were farm kids from large families. Truth be, we weren’t all that close and our paths diverged entirely until a mutual classmate brought together a dozen or so of us not long…

  • Have a reasonably happy New Year

    If at all possible. Somehow, “2025” does not resonate like “2024” did. Our hopes for the new year, therefore, are less those of a hopeful kid dog-earing the Sears Christmas toy catalog and more along the lines of Joe Biden in the White House. We just want to survive the coming new year with most…