Staff & Contributors

Trump Cards

Harry Drabik

The Sadie Factor

Harry Drabik

Poor Saint Val

Harry Drabik

Impossible to forget – Difficult to remember

Harry Drabik

Merrily Marry Me

Harry Drabik

Matters of Age

Harry Drabik

Looking Forward Back

Harry Drabik

The Winter Wolves and My Communist Christmas

Harry Drabik

Good grief, wolves, from four to six of them from the sound, had picked up the sound and formed a bigger chorus of warning and concern.

The trails of words

Harry Drabik

The immediate present, such as the Holiday Season that is so often no longer publicly recognized as Christmas, gives us an opportunity to peer into a few of the tracks and trails contained in words

Our Annual Family Crime Wave

Harry Drabik

At a point in later years mom and dad switched to an aluminum artificial tree with three color spots rotating as decoration. I’m sure none of that was stolen.

North on 61

Harry Drabik

What I call the “Canadian 500” was in full force this weekend. Five hundred kilometers along the shore is roughly the distance between the Twin Ports and Thunder Bay. On holiday weekends those 500 Km come as near a race course as I care to see.

And then there was light

Harry Drabik

As a youngster I was curious about the very many slogans saying Jesus Saves that were painted clearly on every rock cut of substance all the way up the shore to the border.

The time is now preceded by s

Harry Drabik

Head out the window

Harry Drabik

Which of the four?

Harry Drabik

The Leaves Have Flown

Harry Drabik

The Gift of Aggression

Harry Drabik

The gift of aggression is the side of aggression that keeps individuals and societies from being totally savaged by the other form of aggression.

Another term is needed

Harry Drabik

Racism is the heavy weapon in that arsenal. Greed and ignorance are humdrum next to racism which did not exist on the two new continents until we brought it here.

Matters of speech

Harry Drabik

Further North

Harry Drabik

I could get through our hour plus on MN 1 without getting sick if I hung my head out the window like a dog. Getting smacked in the face by a big bug every few minutes was worth the far worse pain of sitting in air soaked with eau de Pall Mall as my p

Further North

Harry Drabik

Another eleventh

Harry Drabik

A little like Alaska

Harry Drabik

When we moved here one of those I most admired and enjoyed had been a run-away from an unhappy home at age 14 when he found refuge in a logging camp where he “slept” among the steam engines to keep them fired through freezing winter nights

Some of the other inmates

Harry Drabik

ears of picking up basic survival skills under the eyes of ever watchful Nuns meant hearing my name called in class I’d pop from my desk like one of Redenbacher’s best kernels ready to recite

Asylum Two

Harry Drabik

It turned out that as novices to the North Shore we helped clear out old stock that no seasoned resident would have fallen for, bargain or not.

Asylum

Harry Drabik

I looked at my questioner and said, “You mean like that guy who looks like he came here intending to go on safari?” A “leopard” band around a bwana hat isn’t at all north woods.

Weekend Asylum

Harry Drabik

I’m proof the vagaries of birth can be matched by those of even the most careful adoption.

The hell is that about?

Harry Drabik

The main reason to avoid blatant insult and rude challenge is that doing those things raises hackles rather than intellect. So in an effort to get at system and meaning I’ll skirt the minefield of culture, politic, and faith

Timid

Harry Drabik

People living along the North Shore have learned to accept, not always with appreciation, the entertainment provided by urban drivers. I’ll be first to say that outside my element and on a crowded freeway I am out of my league.

Self and Being

Harry Drabik

A great thing about going psychiatric was no one (including me) could get clever with it and ask what particular kind of nut bar specialist I planned to be.

Fleeting Fame

Harry Drabik

My shot at fame came without scripture to aid it. I was doing laundry and there it was. All I had to do was open the washer lid and Eureka was upon me. I gaped in awe at a miracle.

Fireworks and Freedoms

Harry Drabik

Because it’s something so easily overdone I’m not much of a flag waver. I take my duty and patriotism in the form of principle and action rather than symbol. Not that I do very much, but I make an effort in what I hope is a balanced manner.

Stories gone north

Harry Drabik

Many talented geologists and prospectors passed by the red gold looking for the yellow. Longyear and the Merritt Brothers were the wiser exceptions.

Just Sayings

Harry Drabik

Among my favorites these days is going down a produce aisle in a North Shore grocery and seeing a cheery sign alerting me to Organic Bananas. The first time I saw such an alert I must have stood there entire minutes trying to conjure up an inorganic

Irreplaceable and Irrevocable

Harry Drabik

It will amaze some that consultants and engineers were not brought in beforehand to study and propose. The case was one of the most competent and experienced locals putting their heads together to plan and execute the job.

Green Winter

Harry Drabik

Up the shore summer was so far been little more than a six letter word about a condition so far in the past it is difficult to remember. We’re having, instead, what I’d call a mild form of Arctic life I’ll call Green Winter

Vox Populi

Harry Drabik

In American culture there are surprisingly few true areas of common ground. You can hardly find a public event or holiday that doesn’t get some form of negative response from one zealous view or another.

Public Meeting

Harry Drabik

But then, what can any speaker in the midst of today’s information say about what future lies outside the auditorium door? None of the wise, well-intended, encouraging, or ruminating speakers at any of my High School, College, or University

Town Halls

Harry Drabik

A contemporary role for town halls is their place in grass roots politics. This is an old term but in some instances explains the drift of people going in and out during meetings.

The first flush of green

Harry Drabik

But, saying an ore boat looked like a log lit up on the water isn’t a particularly successful because nature provides so few examples of thousand foot long electric logs.

Counting Days

Harry Drabik

Seen at its start, looking forward fifty years seems an impossible long time with nothing ahead but time tick-beating monotonously into an unseen and unseeable future.

The Return of Scents

Harry Drabik

The waking of spring is a return of scent replacing the chill of winter air made bone dry by sub-zero wringing everything from it.

The sprung of spring is everywhere in the air and frost

Harry Drabik

Much as, and I truly do, I dislike the cool, wet, muddy weeks of a traditional North Shore spring its chilly side has the great advantage of retarding the twin nemesis (nemi?) of black fly and tick.

More thunked thought

Harry Drabik

Do the rights of a supremacist need as much protection as those of a pacifist? Do the aims of a supremacist represent the same danger as those of a pacifist?

Some thoughts I have thunk

Harry Drabik

*Why is it that people with little to contribute are often the most insistent to do so? Why do persons with nothing to say take so long to get the job done?

Suitable Subject

Harry Drabik

Going through household things (a task many of us have done or face in future) after mother’s death I found a small suit of clothes that set off sharp recollection.

Local Colours

Harry Drabik

But as spring-number-whatever-it-will-turn-out-to- be came and went I was reminded of footlockers and simpler times in my life that are not without some merit in review

Spring’s Sad Sweet Sugars

Harry Drabik

Each of us is her or his own sad sweet tale of springs past and futures our roots have yet to touch. My summer used not to begin until I packed what I’d need into a second hand footlocker and left for work.

The Neanderthal Metaphor

Harry Drabik

Metaphor or figure-of-speech is a sign of possible complexity of thought. Its use does not guarantee so much as a smidge of critical intelligence, but the odds favor a broadened scope of understanding

Bad Boys

Harry Drabik

Accompanied by a disappointed look, a reprimand was recently given me for not more often writing about “nicer” things. Accustomed to such remarks, I call them the “hanging wish.”