Staff & Contributors

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.”

Out of our minds

Harry Drabik

My recent return to the Iron Range took me through terrain roughly called “south of Aurora” which prompted a recollection.

The end of an era

Harry Drabik

It was on the streets of Hoyt Lakes I mastered that bike and without, I can claim with some prideful recollection, too much need of mercurochrome to patch up my wounds.

Hail to the chef

Harry Drabik

There are nice parts about living well up the shore where I’m far away from the larger world (no offense to those living in it). I call it the scenery effect.

Don’t blame me

Harry Drabik

The bulk of what I gathered up was slyly tossed out. Its object of keeping me out of trouble done, the stuff could be thrown. When I was younger we’d gone on a car trip to California.

Winter Wonder Land

Harry Drabik

Like me, I’m sure you have friends or know people who were happy as wedding guest at the free bar when all the weeks of subzero were on us.

The cold hard ground

Harry Drabik

Those are some of the cold and hard realities of living here. It’s not that I really want to go somewhere else, but this winter and last have made me begin to wonder if there might not be a place a little less challenging.

Let’s play a game.

Harry Drabik

A place where the game of suspending judgment seems unlikely but it used in 3D full color versions is politics.

New Year Resolves

Harry Drabik

I’ve reached a stage in life where instead of needing to swear off some ill or excess habit, I can only fondly wish I were capable of performing those offenses and transgressions.

Dear Ol’ Dad

Harry Drabik

In metaphor, things take on wonderful voice. The opposite of wonder I recall from a poem where the wanna-poet used “sno” to replace “snow” to be more visually perfect with his clever rhymes using go, fro, slo, kno

The Season

Harry Drabik

The tradition and transformation of Saint Nicholas is almost as amazing as the Christmas season itself. Nicholas was a Greek bishop fairly early on in the history of Christianity.

Really Good Bad Idea

Harry Drabik

It should have and could have worked, but unless I wanted far more cost and effort than the project was worth, the only rational choice was STOP NOW. WALK AWAY AND DO NOT RETURN.

New Tradition

Harry Drabik

Do you know anyone who has spent their way to prosperity? I don’t, but I know a few who got to bankruptcy proceedings that way, which I don’t believe left them feeling at all prosperous

Increased Erotic Pleasure

Harry Drabik

I wonder how many readers are old enough to recall the time when the warm (a relative term similar to near and distant in cousin) weather in the northern states was also carnival/circus time. What you experienced would have depended on where you live

The old slow-down

Harry Drabik

We are well and truly into the old slow-down, when a tourist is scarce as a pin cherry blossom. Like leaves fallen and scattered, they have blown, leaving memories and assorted local shops with excess inventory to clear out in a Thanksgiving sale

Hunting Season

Harry Drabik

Sure as the first frosts and flurries, hunting season arrives with flashes of blaze orange on heads, in the woods, and filling the front seats of tightly packed pickup trucks

More Poly Ticks

Harry Drabik

Rural or urban, there are community-oriented folk. I like them. They give the best entertainment per time spent. It is utterly and absolutely inspiring listening to a community organizer spiel off the profound litany they picked up at jargon school.

Stuff

Harry Drabik

I’m sure you have patterns or predilections. We all do. One of mine (that drove my parents to anxiety) was a regular habit of “adopting” (sorry, but that’s the most useful term I can think of) additional parents in the form of interesting older coupl

Funeral

Harry Drabik

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gained more experience in the funeral line. Before I reached my mid-teens, a wake/funeral scared the beejeebers out of me.

November is for sautéed chicken & escargot.

Harry Drabik

There is far more nuttiness loose than we are able to use. It is a bumper crop, and did it not so frequently turn ardent and lethal in its convictions, it could be seen as an appealingly human trait

Naked Politics

Harry Drabik

Not long ago someone reminded me of the not so long ago days when boys lined up for swim class wearing nothing but an expression. Standards have changed considerably, with the public being much more skittish (or is it fearful?) about group nudity.

Church Food

Harry Drabik

A spiritual diet may not put on the pounds, but consumed to excess it has a known history of making people fat-headed or obese with fanaticism.