A girlfriend of mine just suffered a pretty bad breakup. So I did what I could. I took her out for the Colleen Kruse Pity Party (patent pending). A proper Pity Party begins with the sixty-minute Walk/Cry. I have found that it is best not to talk at all during the Walk/Cry. An hour of … Read more
I love a to-do list. In fact, I am such a master at list-making I can make lists of my lists. I can subdivide errands, chores, and activities ad infinitum. Sometimes I go numerically, by order of importance to my day. For example: 1. Work out 2. Breakfast 3. Phone calls Other times, I mix … Read more
It is a pity there’s no reason to believe King Arthur actually existed. True, there was a sixth-century monk called Gildas The Wise who penned a wordy jeremiad that mentions a battle at a place called Mount Badon where the Celtic remnant of Roman Britain stemmed the tsunami of Anglo-Saxon invasion. It is also true … Read more
We all, they say, have one book in us. God knows what mine would be. How about Good Wine Needs No Bush: Political Maunderings of an Expatriate Oenophile? Or perhaps Latin Love in a Cold Climate: Memories of a Minnesota Classicist. These are merely titles in the mind. More intriguing are authors who produce one … Read more
I hate my cat. Cat people, save yourself the trouble of emailing me. And, rest assured, this is not a one-sided kind of a deal. The cat hates me, too. I know it is childish and wrong for me to hate the cat. After all, it is not her fault that I bought her. I … Read more
On any list of the smaller enormities of modern life, other people’s Christmas circular letters ought to loom large. It is not the information itself that is so rebarbative. In the great scheme of things, knowing about the family’s new job/house/car/place at the lake is no more or less annoying than reading that Junior has … Read more
So, maybe by now you have seen Lars and the Real Girl. It’s a comedy set in Minnesota and the title character, Lars Lindstrom, is the sort of Norwegian bachelor Garrison Keillor never mentions. You see, Lars is a social misfit who sends away for an anatomically correct sex doll, falls in love with it, … Read more
Last spring brought a nasty shock. I was walking down a leafy side street off Como Avenue, hoping to admire in passing the jolly gingerbread woodwork around the eaves of the tumbledown duplex where my POSSLQ and I shared our first Minnesota home. The place was in pretty poor nick when we rented it twenty … Read more
We’re all running a day late and a ten-spot short these days, but one thing’s certain. If you can’t do your Halloween candy shopping ’til 7 p.m. on All Hallows’ Eve, even though every other candy display has been stripped bare, you’ll still find racks of Circus Peanuts, a Halloween treat that ranks alongside sticking … Read more
A prophet is not without honor, save in her own country and among her own people. One of life’s perennial puzzles is why people in the United States do not seem to read the wonderful novels of Alison Lurie, the sharp-eyed rhapsode of Ithaca, New York. Every good paperback emporium in England stocks Alison Lurie; … Read more