Can't get across the river but we'll try again We’ve had monster thunderstorms in Minnesota this summer, which gave me the chance to be manly and reassuring and tell my wife not to worry as we drove through the dark of midday, bolts of lightning like bombs bursting in air. And indeed, we arrived safely at our destination, a luncheon honoring an old pal of mine whom I’ve known since we were in first grade together. About thunderstorms I know less than the average medieval peasant. I majored in English and stayed away from the sciences lest I appear to be stupid, as a result of which I became stupider. As a would-be poet in college, I wrote poems in which weather was a device to indicate the poet’s own mood — weather as narcissism! — so there were gloomy moonless nights and sometimes rain but never thunderstorms — too dramatic for a Minnesotan. Somehow we young poets of back then got the idea that despair was the truest sign of intelligence and sensitivity. Now I look around at young people and see a greater interest in comedy and satire, a healthy development for which our president should surely get a good deal of credit. The luncheon we drove through the storm to attend was to honor Billy who grew up out in the sticks with me. We attended a three-room schoolhouse, two grades to each room, which now is considered quite progressive, but in our case it was an innovation due to lack of funds. I envied him because his family had a TV, a huge cabinet with a screen the size of a coffee saucer and I hung around his back door until I was invited in. Read the rest of the column >>> | 
