Category: Newspaper Columns

  • Forestry for birds

    Forestry for birds

    Longtime readers have watched my cliched descent into middle aged bird watching in cringeworthy real time. Ten years ago I would have made fun of birders, now I am one.  Today’s column touches on that amusing transition, but also expands a conversation I’ve been having with readers about forestry and resource management. The best management…

  • Stuff and more stuff

    Stuff and more stuff

    Today’s column is about stuff. The stuff in our house moves through a metaphorical digestive tract. We pay for stuff we like and savor it somewhere in our home, perhaps in the closet or the living room. Years later, the good stuff becomes old stuff. Usually it goes to the basement where a jumbled family…

  • The phones that bind us together, tear us apart

    The phones that bind us together, tear us apart

    My latest column explores new cellphone policies sweeping Minnesota high schools, many of them expanding limitations enacted last year. When we talk about limiting cellphones at school, we’re often trying to address distraction. Distracted students can’t learn. That’s an important problem that was improved significantly in schools that implemented phone limits last year.  But some…

  • Minnesota’s popular higher ed experiment turns 40

    Minnesota’s popular higher ed experiment turns 40

    Minnesota is home to the Post-Secondary Enrollment Option (PSEO) program. Enacted 40 years ago, PSEO was replicated in other states, but never as robustly as envisioned by Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich in 1985. I didn’t use PSEO when I was in high school, but did take advantage of concurrent enrollment courses — college in the…

  • Detroit Lakes trolls teach rural resilience

    Detroit Lakes trolls teach rural resilience

    By now, you may have heard about the Dambo trolls in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. These massive sculptures made of natural and recycled materials were unveiled last year by Danish artist Thomas Dambo. Since then, hundreds of thousands of visitors have poured through the Detroit Lakes area to see the trolls. Christina and I went to…

  • Talking ‘sauna diplomacy’ with the Finnish ambassador

    Talking ‘sauna diplomacy’ with the Finnish ambassador

    This week I interviewed the Finnish ambassador to the United States, Leena-Kaisa Mikkola. She’s speaking at FinnFest in Duluth this weekend. The soft-focus nostalgia of the Finnish-American experience on the Iron Range tends to dominate a lot of my history conversations. So, in today’s column, I was glad to explore something less theoretical: Finland today. …

  • Arts scene makes conflict-prone community edgy in a good way

    Arts scene makes conflict-prone community edgy in a good way

    Ely, Minn., is one of those far-flung communities that stoke the imagination of the big outside world while remaining the entire planet to the people living there.  Like any small town, you take the bad with the good. I never lived in Ely, but have family connections there. My great-grandmother lived just outside town on…

  • The soul, the psyche & the end of a series

    The soul, the psyche & the end of a series

    Today brings the last entry in my series of columns about mental health in the Minnesota Star Tribune. Shortly after I started at the Strib, I floated an idea for a column about mental health in an editorial meeting. My editor said that sounds more like a series than a column. Ramrod that I am,…

  • It’s getting late

    It’s getting late

    Late night television once dominated our bedtime routines, occupying space now held by doomscrolling and mindless videos.  Years ago, I wrote about my unique relationship with late night television when I was growing up. In particular, my teen years were anchored by daily viewing of the strange routines of comedy talk shows — Carson, Letterman,…

  • Mental health crisis rages on, but recovery lifts hope

    Mental health crisis rages on, but recovery lifts hope

    One of the hardest things about a mental health crisis is the overwhelming singularity of the current problem. You can’t “multitask.” The future is an entirely abstract concept. And while I share this from my own perspective, I’ve talked about this with many others. Today I continue my series on mental health issues in Minnesota…

  • Power dynamics

    Power dynamics

    How much should we trust power? Most would say we should be very careful about trusting power. Then, they would trust the power they like. Liberals tend to be trusting of government. Conservatives tend to trust markets and corporations. Or at least that’s how it used to be. The old order is falling apart. Government,…

  • The Iron Range from above

    The Iron Range from above

    The other morning I slept in. It was the weekend and a good time to rest. As I lazed in half-sleep, half-contemplation, I looked above me to see something I hadn’t seen before. My wife loves owls so we have owls all over the house. On the top shelf of the bookcase near my side…

  • Latest strike shows the pressure facing rural health care

    Latest strike shows the pressure facing rural health care

    Health care is hard to understand. Let’s start with the fact that most of us have no idea how our human bodies actually work. Thousands of years of science and development taught much to the human race. But the average individual knows only a little. We don’t know anatomy. We don’t know how drugs are…

  • Art and nature are worth more than ‘the socials’

    Art and nature are worth more than ‘the socials’

    Sometimes it feels like I need to put a note on my computer than says “Do not become Andy Rooney.” The fact that I can even identify the cantankerous late CBS “60 Minutes” correspondent is already a problem. Rooney’s prime occurred when I was just a child … a child who would make his parents…

  • This bill kills

    This bill kills

    A full description of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” remains a moving target. But if the version of the budget reconciliation deal being debated in the U.S. Senate on Monday afternoon is any indicator, it could be one of the most devastating bills for rural health care in a generation.  The health care system is…