I’ve been a bad political blogger lately. Norm Coleman is all caught up in a free suit controversy and Iron Range State Rep. Tony Sertich’s Republican opponent is doing region-wide negative TV ads wearing a white turtleneck and an orange hunting vest. There is so much to talk about and so little time with all the book business (“Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range,” out now from Red Step Press) and my “job” that pays the “bills.”

So this morning I’ll just tell a story. I went to get a haircut Tuesday at a barber shop in Grand Rapids that I’d never been to before. It looked like a pretty typical sole proprietorship barber shop with a friendly barber. He starts cutting my hair, we make small talk and then he wheels me around to get at the other side of my head. I realize that in a regular sized fish tank at the back of the room is a two-foot-long koi fish whose name, I learned later, is Angel. The guy tells me that every morning he pets this fish, that she’s kind of like a dog and that she’s named for the miracle that allowed her to survive the “ick” when she was just a minnow. He goes over to feed her and, after he drops in the pellets, I swear to everything holy you can hear Angel crunching on her food. It sound like a guy eating potato chips but it’s a giant damn fish in a barber shop.

Made my day. My week. I’ll probably see Angel when my life flashes before my eyes.