WobblyReport

The first Saturday night of 2025 at Skate Place brought out the youth. Holiday visitors had said their farewells and travelers had returned home. Classes were to resume that Monday. Chandra is making the most of her roller skates, a gift from Santa Claus. They are black and pink with hearts and wheels that light up multi-colored when they roll at speed. She has worn the skates often since Christmas and put them on in the morning of the aforementioned Saturday when she got out of bed. The atmosphere in the concessions area was frenetic with teenage chatter and popular music bleeding over from the skating area across the lobby. Blue, snowflake-shaped lights drifted around, issuing from a projector that cast them in moving patterns on the orange walls and matching tabletops, the yellow bench chairs and dark, retro carpet—you know the kind, with patterns resembling confetti and curly ribbons. * * * The library in West Branch is a fine place for quiet concentration regardless how many peopl...

Holiday tunes emerged and bloomed in our part of the world, this year as ev’ry in collective mem’ry. Festive music is as unifying and dividing as any ritual practice. In our own lives we might find ourselves on one or the other side of mirthful-musical enjoyment or annoyance, at any sung given time.  O holy night, so few opportunities to start a sentence thusly. Last Christmas was probably it for most. I don’t want a lot for Christmas except to let it snow, let it snow.  Would referring to a list be cheating? Yes, better to draw these from the surrounding air and to dive deep into reminiscences. It was a Sunday this year when the first bars of Mariah Carey’s seminal classic drifted through our household. A neighbor girl sang them through our daughter’s toy karaoke machine.  Last Christmas, I heard the Wham! song enough. The very next day, I heard it again. This year, what do I hear? A Jimmy Eat World cover from 2001 I had no idea existed despite having bought their long...

Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year are three of four of our national holidays established in 1870, along with Independence Day. Christmas and New Year both fall on a Wednesday this year, which will make life interesting for a couple of weeks, with students excused from classes and businesses operating on holiday hours. Oh and happy Thanksgiving, belated, good tidings to all in the days and nights coming, especially during holidays and celebrations. Christmas is coming up fast. Lots to do, oh, lots to do. Has everything been arranged? Is all in place? Down the corn stalks and harvest a young conifer tree or resurrect a facsimile from the basement like me. Decorating and undecorating will be a continual process unto and through the New Year, till straggling adornments have hung so auld long syne that neighbors begin to call in wellness checks. Old Man Winter came in on the heels of November and revived the northern Midwest’s annual, first-snow derby out on various county roads and stat...

When was the last time you tried something new—I mean really new? The tried and true remain a foundation of daily living but the will to step out on a limb is vital, both for the individual spirit and the health of our species. How else could we have discovered milk can be preserved by dipping frogs in it? No, seriously, look it up. Trying new things is dangerous and fun. It’s all belly laughs and broken ribs. Sorry, that’s just the mid-rift crisis talking.  I return periodically to the Analects of Confucius, who had his own, respected forebears. The Master said, at 15 I set my heart upon learning At 30, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. At 40, I no longer suffered from perplexities. At 50, I knew what were the biddings of heaven. At 60, I heard them with docile ears. At 70, I could follow the dictates of my own heart; for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right. The joys and obligations of liberty lie in both ritual and experiment. Danger and fun att...

A lure came in the mail, not unlike the sweepstakes of yesteryear, to the addressee “or current resident” (somewhat insultingly). But here were three pull-tab tickets, tantalizingly hot-glued to a glossy flyer with images of cash and prizes and happy winners with big grins and even bigger novelty checks, the flyer gleaming on top of a daily pile of post. Obviously this was no one’s first rodeo. But times are tough and everybody’s feeling the squeeze, so the slimmest of chances can inspire a swing for the fences. After pulling the tabs and reading print that gets finer every year, the odds that the three matching truck images and all-caps, red text that said “WINNER” would pay seemed to be about one in one and a half million. But as a very unwise Lloyd Christmas once exclaimed to an incredulous Mary Swanson: “you’re telling me there’s a chance?” So on Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, I kissed my wife for luck and drove to a nearby Chevrolet dealership, 99.9998% sure that I would never, ever re...