Casual Attire for a Sunny Spring Day at Home. . .

Please ignore the skinny, pale legs and concentrate on the shoes themselves! Up top, I'm wearing tan chino shorts with a navy blue polo top. A little chilly now, but I'll warm quickly up once the raking starts.

Today is Earth Day, and since classes wrapped up for yours truly yesterday afternoon, I am about to head outside to pick up sticks and rake up any grass thatch, to help along our poor excuse for a lawn.

Until late August, I am realtively free, save for some student term papers to collect later this week, reading through them, and then final course grades to submit after the weekend. That means, sadly, that dressing up is on hiatus for the next three months. Sigh. Yes, there is an article I want to write and possible a translation or two to do, but my wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to do that from the confines of home offices, which means that more casual clothing is the rule until about August 21st or so.

However, that does not mean that one need descend into the depths of Slobdom. For instance, for those average guys who wondering about how to kick up their warm weather style several notches, I'd suggest three items, which are available at all price points: leather deck shoes, khaki and/or Madras shorts (with either a 6" or 9" inseam), and pique weave, short-sleeved polo shirts in solid colors, though not white for obvious reasons. It doesn't get any easier than that. And with any luck, you can find a lot of this stuff in good used condition in thrift/charity shops if you don't want to purchase it new.

Now, some might sneer and mutter something about looking like the front of a J. Crew catalog, but ignore them. I've noticed over many years that people say things like that when they are jealous or allow themselves to feel self-conscious because someone else looks nice. You'll look good in any case, feel extremely comfortable in all but the hottest weather, and you won't look like an overgrown schoolboy, aping the latest music, movie, or sports star who has adopted some version of "thugwear" as his sad attempt at edgy personal expression. Yawn.

If you want to kick up your everyday style several notches and dress like a serious adult male with (legal) things to do, places to go, and people to see, don't go anywhere near that kind of appearance. Nope. Far better to keep your warm weather gear simple, comfortable, and classic. Your boyfriend, girlfriend, wife, or partner will appreciate your efforts to look pulled together during the dog days of August here in the Northern Hemsiphere.

-- Heinz-Ulrich

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Up North Style. . .

Bad Dad makes a friend. YMP and Bad Dad on the shores of Lake Michigan. Or was that Crystal Lake? The Grand Duchess takes a selfie in her kayak. How NOT to impress the girls sunning themselves along the river. YMP and Bad Dad kayaking on the Platte River headed toward Loon Lake. J ust back from a week in Northern Michigan in a charming and spacious house on the banks of the Betsie River outside of Thompsonville. A largely pleasant seven days despite some challenging episodes with the Young Master, who has picked up some very questionable habits and language from his friends in the 8th Grade during the school year just ended. But otherwise, we enjoyed ourselves and contemplated remaining for a few days longer since the house was available. In the end, we decided to return home as planned originally since neither my wife, nor I wanted to spend the remaining days chained to our computers in Zoom meetings from our vacation destination. I actually managed to leave the laptop and ip

Mid-June Thursday Style. . .

A nother pretty typical variation on the theme for late spring, summer, and very early fall. I'm a huge fan of Madras and have several such shirts in the seasonal rotation. Lightweight, exceedingly comfortable, and even dressy when pressed and tucked in, which is the usual way of things here at Totleigh in the Wold. Now, if I had my druthers, I'd still rather be skiing the trails in the upper half of "The Mitten" (of Michigan), in the Upper Peninsula, or Ontario. But summers ain't so bad either, and I'd look pretty funny walking around in cross-country ski attire during June. -- Heinz-Ulrich

A Lazy Saturday at the End of June. . .

A sleepy first half of the weekend here at Totleigh. Warmer and quite humid ahead of an approaching cool front here in Mid-Michigan. Perfect for yet another pair of chino shorts an a seersucker shirt -- tucked in of course -- with the usual leather deck shoes and ribbon belt. Otherwise, not much accomplished beyond a page or so of writing and monkeying around with audio settings for an upcoming podcast episode. However, I was not completely useless yesterday! I made a huge fruit salad for dinner, which the Grand Duchess and I enjoyed a short while later at the table on the back porch. The Young Master, as is his wont on Saturday evenings, took his dinner on a tray in the TV room upstairs where he whiled away a couple of hours on Flight Simulator, flying some sort of commercial airliner to some destination across the Atlantic or Pacific. I would have loved that sort of technology at about nine or 10 way back during the late 1970s, aka The Stone Age. As it is, my sister and

Classic Style

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