The Melting World

A wonderful miracle occurred yesterday. On our way home from the Electronics Store (called BEST), I managed to whistle IN TUNE an entire refrain of the song “Auld Lang Syne”. I have never been able to whistle (or sing for that matter) in tune for such an extended moment. Maybe this happened because it was […]

Yesterday my son tried to open the freezer door to get at a second popsicle. He tried in earnest (slyly ‘playing’ with his toys near the refrigerator) several times, and each time I told him “no,” which led to the usual but mercifully brief squawks of protest. Then when I entered the shower, I saw […]

This weekend is the 50th anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder the night of August 28, 1955, in Money, Mississippi. If he were alive today, he’d be 64, probably a grandfather, though we can never know, sadly, what he might have been. Here’s some links to read more about him and the reopening of his case […]

I am not an enemy of ants. As a child, I was a pro-active ant advocate: I would save their homes when the rain fell by frantically hopping with a battered black umbrella from ant hill to ant hill on our front sidewalk. I have never willingly scraped an ant hill with my shoe, or […]

A small painting of mine with the Chinese character for leaf, pronounced “ha” in Japanese.

A poem card made in my productive maternity year. This is a prayer said by Norwegian immigrants in Minnesota; it serves as an epigraph in my poem, ‘Pelican Lake.

Now that I finally have breathing space (2 weeks) before outside work and academic duties return in gale force, I find myself wandering about from place to place via the Internet, from idea to idea, without any one focus. Is this what happens when a dog is suddenly unleashed and de-collared after being tied up […]

I am finishing up a book by John Lie (2001), called “Multi-ethnic Japan.” I plan on using much of its argument to teach Identity and Culture here at Hokkaido U of Education. Fascinating stuff, and I learned much about the hybrid character of Japanese culture, or rather it opened my eyes to what is already […]

My son and I took a short trip this past weekend to a nearby town called Biei, famous for its lavender and patchwork fields. We happened upon a wheat harvester, a gargantuan machine I haven’t seen in a long time, not since my late teen car drives between Minneapolis and Saint Cloud. It crept along […]

I finally had the chance to sit down and watch a film I had read about in my New Media class discussions.: What the BLEEP do we know?, which is a sort of self-help film but also a film about quantum physics, too, and I liked it, and this is not without a critical eye, […]