The Writings of Peter Vogt — The Archives

I publish a new essay here every Friday—which, over time, adds up to lots of essays!
So enjoy these pieces from the growing For Pete’s Sake archives. I hope you like reading these posts as much as I like writing them and sharing them.

Belief Without Certainty Is What True Belief Is All About

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Every Wednesday afternoon during my seventh- and eighth-grade years, my junior high school “released” a bunch of us kids as part of a hazy weekly practice called, imaginatively enough, Release Time. By all rights, this ritual should have taken place one time and one time only at the nearby Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, where our […]

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Do Artists Have Any Real Idea of Their Real Impact on Real, Ordinary People? No — but the Impact Is Real

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He doesn’t know it – and he never will – but Bruce Springsteen made me cry this morning. Over two fried eggs and a couple of pieces of peanut butter toast, all resting on a chipped plate on my knee, I wept as Bruce Springsteen sang. Actually, it was Prince who brought me to tears. […]

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You Can’t Do Anything You Set Your Mind to — but You Can Do Most Anything

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I’m not sure about the wisdom in “you can do anything you set your mind to.” In my own case, if “anything” includes playing left wing for the Minnesota Wild in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, or being the new Jim Morrison in a modern-day, reconfigured version of The Doors, well, the theory […]

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It Takes So Little to Do So Much — Whether We See It or Not

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Every morning when I take my kids to the bus stop, I lament the fact that our eight-year-old neighbor girl has failed to deliver on the French toast I’ve been craving — the French toast I’ve been only half-jokingly begging her to bring me ever since the cold winter began. “Do you have my French […]

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It’s Time to Take the Shields Down — Then Quit Putting Them Up in the First Place

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I’m at the car dealership. Waiting to be taken for a ride. My dad told me not to trust mechanics. “They’re all crooks,” he would always huff and puff. Not true. When I was in college, I met a local mechanic named Titus who ran his own little shop and once made a simple $40 […]

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