The Wilderness Legacy was our boat/ship home (when does a boat become a ship?) during our week in Southeast Alaska. The captain, a veteran of 35+ years of piloting had an open-door policy for his command post, which we didn’t get around to cashing in on until our last full day onboard. Fortunately, we had chosen a moment when the boat was anchored, so the captain (whose name any good journalist...

I’m back from our intense week in Alaska. There are so many different angles from which to approach writing about the experience, so I’m guessing that it’s going to take a couple of postings to work through it all. Let me begin briefly at the very end. I had what I thought was a good old-fashioned cold shipboard but testing on our return indicated that Rosellen and I had very mild COVID. I’m...

How often over the years did I instruct students during writing times to just write whatever came into their heads, rather than telling me that they don’t know what to write about. It’s amazing that in my more than three and a half years of blogging, I’ve almost never had to resort to that strategy myself. Somehow, each time I sat down at the computer an idea emerged to center my writing. But...

Like most newspapers across the country, the Chicago Tribune has cut its staff and coverage drastically. Much of their national and international news is purchased from either the New York Times or the Associated Press and runs in the paper’s second section. There was an exception in today’s Tribune, which ran a New York Times story prominently at the bottom of the first page. I don’t always love...

Pianos, like people, have biographies. If you need any convincing, check out The Piano Lesson by my favorite playwright August Wilson. It’s the story of an heirloom piano which some members of the family want to sell and use the cash to buy land, while others are determined to keep it to preserve their history and legacy. The piano had previously been owned by the man who enslaved their ancestors...