A friend called me recently. She claimed she wanted my advice, but in fact she just wanted, as we say, to vent. Family Christmas plans had been made in a way which was going to make it extremely inconvenient, if not impossible, for her to share Christmas with close family members. Her objections had been  Read more »

In my last column, I talked about why we may need to make changes to maintain our largest social insurance programs, Social Security and Medicare. Whenever this subject is raised, some people will always say, “Well, in the old days, before they had these programs, people just took care of their own, and that worked  Read more »

Every time I hear a discussion of the national budget, I end up feeling that it is my duty as a patriotic citizen to die as soon as I can. I don’t enjoy this feeling, and I don’t think it’s quite fair, even if the country is deep in debt. We’ve fought a couple of  Read more »

I was making an overnight visit to a friend. We’d spent a pleasant afternoon. In the evening we would travel together to a poetry reading, in which both of us were performing, me as a poet, she as a musician. At a certain point I looked at the clock and said, “Well, if we’re leaving  Read more »

Has it ever occurred to you that there’s something weird about celebrating the Governor’s Fishing Opener? The governor we are talking about is the Governor of Minnesota, not the “Governor of Fish.” I was sufficiently curious about this question that I looked up the powers and duties of the governor in the Minnesota State Constitution.  Read more »

It’s not news that I saw the first chipmunk of spring run across the front yard Friday, April 7. It’s also not news that the sand hill cranes, which dance and nest in the swampy side of our 40 acres, came trilling in about two weeks ago, and that I saw the first robin visiting  Read more »

I’ve been climbing around in my family tree. I’ve always been interested in family history. I had a grandmother who lived with the family when I was a child, who was a great storyteller and a vigorous amateur genealogist. I’ve indulged myself in the last couple of weeks with a two-week free membership at one  Read more »

I believe it was about this time last year that I wrote a column called, “Winter of the Turkeys.” It was, too. Most days, from November up into March, we had a flock of up to 30 wild turkeys scratching around under the bird feeder in the front yard. By March, the main flock had  Read more »

Last night on television, I saw a young lady in Minneapolis complaining about the cold. It was below zero that day. When we got up, it was minus 27 in our front yard. On the other hand, she was complaining while wearing a coat that bared her neck, no scarf, a hat which didn’t cover  Read more »