As the first snow of the year falls, we see campaign signs vanish from roadsides, dissipating like the fading drone of negative ads that oozed from our TVs and radios last week. They are tomorrow’s yard sale signs and ideal mats for your garage floor to change oil or paint furniture. Like the elections themselves,…

I spent my high school years working as an overnight disk jockey for an easy listening radio station on Minnesota’s Iron Range. This experience warped me in many incalculable ways, not least of which will be exhibited in the following analogy. Earth, Wind, and Fire is more than a 1970s pop supergroup, it’s an accurate…

At long last Taconite, Minnesota’s entrance sign rings true: Northern Minnesota is once again “hub of the nation.” Minnesota’s “Fightin’” Eighth Congressional District is one of just a few in the country in which the outcome is not 99 percent assured. Yet despite several million advertising dollars scorched on behalf of Democratic incumbent Rep. Rick…

Think back to childhood. Do you remember that one nontraditional pet you had? I’m not talking about a dog or cat here. Dogs and cats see their names stitched in Christmas stockings. They wear sacred vestments, such as collars and sweaters. Dogs and cats insist upon themselves in ways that caged animals usually don’t. Non-traditional…

Here’s your thought experiment for the day. Go watch some kind of live coverage of Congress. It doesn’t matter what they talk about, just look at them. Ancient partisans, middle aged careerists, twitchy young up-and-comers emit loud nothings into microphones then whispering crucial somethings out of earshot. Watching Congress in action shows why an unshakeable…

Several news outlets are reporting the annual weather predictions offered by the Farmer’s Almanac. In short, Minnesota is poised for another cold winter, much like the last one. One recalls that while few all-time-low temperature records were broken last winter, we smashed records for consecutive days below zero degrees Fahrenheit. It was a slog, an…

Push the power button. The icon appears. We have a few seconds. Sip coffee. Look out the window. Sunny now, but look to the west where clouds gather just above the trees. Did we check the weather last night? Power on. Here we go. First the notifications pour over the top of the screen. Then…

Humans prefer borders. We’re like squirrels that way, and screech just the same. We see our world in one place and that of others locked over there, across some line only we can see. Some borders stand arbitrary, penned on maps with compasses and rulers by a whiskey-breathing voyager of the old times. Some borders…

Slowly approaching a premature middle age I find myself firmly anchored in the woods of Northern Minnesota. Each occasional trip to our state’s Twin Cities metropolis is less a drive and more the unraveling of one life for the winding up of another. The rules change. People wear different stripes, gather in exponentially larger numbers.…

I remember once sitting at the kitchen table with my dad shortly after he turned 30. I was 8 or 9 and in the process of memorizing an encyclopedia on American Democracy. “Dad,” I said, “You’re old enough to run for the Senate!” I was busy imaging his campaign. (He’d need to wash off that…

Like many of my era, I was introduced to the “myth” of Sasquatch (aka “Bigfoot”) through the motion picture “Harry and the Hendersons.” In this movie, not only was Sasquatch real, his heart was bigger than his feet, thawing the stern countenance of John Lithgow, who was a pretend jerk in a lot of movies…