Bryan Strawser

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Having spent all but three days in Minneapolis since Memorial Day, I write this from yet another Northwest Airlines flight back to Providence, Rhode Island. We’ll be landing soon, but of course, you won’t read this until later.

The new home passed inspection so now it’s on to the rate lock in a few days and then we wait until closing at the end of August. Buyers are finally coming to look at the Boston house tomorrow and Sunday, so life is looking up. The drive out to the home inspection on Tuesday noonish took 18 minutes to go 21 miles from downtown Minneapolis over to Woodbury.

Quite an improvement over the 90 minute each way drive I would run into around Boston.

There’s more travel on the horizon with a short trip next week – just a hop and a bit.

More to come….

Negotiation

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Just wrapped up twenty four hours of hellish negotiation and such over the home purchase in Minnesota. Short version: found the house, we were right in the range the seller’s wanted, but the closing dates were a month off. Solution: up the offer. House sold. Home inspection Tuesday, closing at the end of August.

It’s amazing what an upgrade in property, home, and community one gets here in Minnesota versus back home in Massachusetts.

Some pics:

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The two level deck! Gonna have some fun with this:

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Real Blogging

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I write this blog for myself – not for anyone else – and therefore choose to write about what interests me, when it interests me..

Actor Wil Wheaton has a great post up about his own encounter with trying to keep his blogging “real” and stay focused on what he’s doing in the rest of his life.

It’s a great perspective on blogging and life balance….

Lileks: Oh, so we lost, then.

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Last week, James Lileks writes in the Screedblog:

I can imagine in late 2001 asking a question of myself in 2005:

What’s the main story? The smallpox quarantine? Fallout from the Iranian – Israeli exchange contaminating Indian crops? A series of bombings in heartland malls?


“Well, no – the big story today has to do with soldiers mishandling terrorists’ holy texts at a detention center.”

Mishandling? How? Like, you mean, they opened it up without first checking to see if it was ticking, and it blew up –


“No, they handled it in a way that disrespected it. Infidels are supposed to use gloves.”

Oh. So we lost, then.

What could be…

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One of my favorite authors is Richard Bach. A run through of my blogging over the last four years will point you to many quotes from his works over the years. There’s probably been no other author that was more influential in my most contemplative years as a teenager as this man.

Bach wrote across two books of his belief, so to speak, in alternate worlds. I believe it was in “One” that he wrote of how everytime we reach a major decision in life.. our world splits in two.. The reality.. and the alternate…

In one world, we move on.. with the decision that we made, the choice locked, and the reality is…. well the reality of what we face.

In the other world, the alternate, the opposite is true.. and thus the world splits off and becomes…. the alternate… it goes on without you, so to speak…

And then, in our dreams, or our nightmares, and at other times, we get a glimpse of what could have been – but yet will never be.

Or could it…

Mansions of the Lord

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It was a year ago this month that the world paused to honor the memory of Ronald Reagan.

It was during the funeral service at the National Cathedral that I first heard the hymn “Mansions of the Lord”.

To fallen soldiers let us sing,
Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing,
Our broken brothers let us bring
To the Mansions of the Lord

No more weeping,
No more fight,
No friends bleeding through the night,
Just Devine embrace,
Eternal light,
In the Mansions of the Lord

Where no mothers cry
And no children weep,
We shall stand and guard
Though the angels sleep,
Oh, through the ages let us keep
The Mansions of the Lord

iTunes has the song recorded by the Glee Club from West Point – and that’s the version that cropped up tonight on my iPod as it shuffled through the playlist.

A fitting end to a long day.

In Memory

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It is not that these men are dead, but that they have so died…that they offered themselves willingly to death in a cause vital and dear to humanity; and what is more, a cause they comprehended as such, and looking at it, in all its bearings and its consequences, solemnly pledged to it all that they had and were…. This comprehension of the cause, his intelligent devotion, this deliberate dedication of themselves to duty, these deaths suffered in testimony of their loyalty, faith and love, make these men worthy of honor today, and these deaths equal to the lauded deaths of martyrs. Not merely that the cause was worthy but that they were worthy…. God grant to us that lesson of devotion and loyalty be not lost….

They gave their best for something held dearer than joy, something of good beyond their personal experience; the giving of which, in this world’s estimation, is of such cost that it cannot be justified by your understanding but only in your overpassing faith.

We do not live for self…. We are a part of a larger life, reaching before and after, judged not by deeds done in the body but deeds done in the soul. We wish to be remembered. Willing to die, we are not willing to be forgotten.

– Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, 20th Maine, Memorial Day 1884, Brunswick, Maine