When we travel nowadays, no matter how far away, we remain very close to home. Hop on a jet plane to Rio, to Moscow, hell, probably to Antarctica and you can kept abreast of every drop of rain that falls … Continue reading
From St. Paul to Coon Rapids to Summerville, South Carolina. Norwegian ancestry (as evidenced by a pile of cookbooks and a Norwegian/English dictionary), a Japanese gent in Minnesota, to the “Christ haunted South” (in Flannery O’Connor’s words.) A sportswriter, the … Continue reading
There’s a wonderful old joke by our man Groucho Marx that goes, outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. Well, if you’ve got a dog that’s big enough, … Continue reading
Tolstoy once asked: how much land does a man need? I pondered this as we wandered the homes of the rich, and then the very, very rich. To be honest, I have deep and abiding distrust of the wealthy, a … Continue reading
Who doesn’t love ties? Neckties, bowties, Windsor knot, half-Windsor, four-in-hand. Well, if my lying eyes are to be believed, most men dislike ties, wearing them only for their work, a colorful metaphor for the strangling nature of white collar existence. … Continue reading
As you’ve guessed by now, estate sale shopping is as much about observation as it is buying used stuff that you may or may not need. Admiring the collective detritus is exciting. This is not the same as visiting a … Continue reading
Apropos of the coming Mardi Gras, this weekend was a parade of estate sales, fun sales and sad sales, sales that stank to high heaven, those of low income and high treasure and those of great wealth and insipid taste. … Continue reading
“The worst trouble a man can be in, I think, is to have one hope left, and that a hope of something so inherently improbably that he knows deep in his heart it won’t happen… Three feeble gardenias on a … Continue reading
There are moments in the estate sale biz when you find yourself thoroughly outflanked by the likes of the professional. When you realize that for some people, estate sale carousing is a serious undertaking, it’s a man’s bread-and-butter, it puts … Continue reading
When you live in a dismal town or suburb, bereft of the internet or cable television, unable to drive and far from any challenging diversion, it must seem like life is a veritable wasteland. Wandering through a pair of sad … Continue reading