Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

Remember when the best comeback to a bully in school was, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Of course, that statement is bullshit. The rhyme was meant to be a feel-good way for kids to fight back. The line first appeared in print in the mid-19th century in The Christian Recorder in March 1862, where it was introduced as an "old adage" taught to children. No adult, except a psychopath perhaps, can say they never hear hurtful words flung at them. Nor can they say they haven’t hurled hurtful words at others. I’ve heard and hurled my fair share of words with the power to hurt, sometimes accidentally. Putting words in their proper place does help you to keep your sanity, though.  I’ve been thinking a lot about another trope from school days that seems timeless: "The pen is mightier than the sword." The sentiment in this seven-word pronouncement is that persuasion, communication, and intellect are more effective means of changing the wo...

One of the promised benefits of old age is that life gets easier. The calendar and the clock would have far less impact on daily life. Social Security keeps groceries on the table. Medicare and an apple a day keep the doctor away. In reality, those promises are no different than the one a delinquent customer makes when he says, “The check is in the mail.” Since moving to metro Duluth a year ago, we have needed to find primary care doctors because we both rely on medication to keep the grim reaper at bay. Or so we’ve been told. Last March, the Bohunk had an appointment with the clinic on the other side of US 2 to get her prescription regimen renewed. She also had scheduled her “free” annual Medicare wellness visit.  Even though we’ve been insured under Medicare for eight years, and even though our clinic in Grand Marais included the “annual wellness visit (AWV)” in our annual physical/drug renewal visits, we really didn’t understand what it was all about. In April, after the big-nam...

If I had a quarter for all the times I heard this when I was struggling to become an adult, I’d be Musk-like rich. “Don’t get too big for your britches, young man.” Whenever the sin of pride reared its ugly head, Mom, Dad, or one of the other parent figures in my life would knock me down a peg or two. They’d tell me that the seams eventually rip, and the fall from grace isn't graceful when a person gets too big for their britches.  I have vivid memories of pitching in an East Richfield Little League baseball game in the 60s. Our fields were fenced all round with real dugouts for coaches and gear. Home plate and the bases were real, not soaked paper plates held down with large stones. Our uniforms were made of real wool, with stirrup socks and fitted caps. And I was king of the mound. At some critical moment, I was pitching to the opposing team's best hitter. My nerves were running high, and after what seemed then to be a historic duel, I threw a third strike for the third out. ...

With all that’s going on in our world today, one crisis that gets too little attention is the demise of cursive handwriting. More on that later, but the dying of cursive was preceded by the end of shorthand. Perhaps for sexist reasons, it was the late 60s after all, I did not take a shorthand class in high school. In my liberal self-defense, however, I did take typing, at which I became proficient. Typing turned out to be a skill I needed in my work life. My first shirt-and-tie job, barely past 20, I was the Traffic Coordinator for a manufacturing firm in the Halloween Capital of the world, Anoka, MN. My boss was the Traffic Manager, barely into what we call middle management these days. He was high enough in management to have a secretary, Judy.  These were the days when Secretary Day was just getting underway, and no one held the title "Administrative Assistant". Despite my vaunted title, Judy and I were basically at the same level of the corporate hierarchy. We worked in a...