Today is my 35th birthday. With this monumental occasion comes an important announcement. Despite now being constitutionally eligible to run for President of the United States, I am suspending my campaign to do so which began 1992 in Mr. Softich’s sixth grade class at the Cherry School. When they brought in the button making press…

Christmas arrives Thursday. This, after weeks of new Yuletide songs mixed by club DJs trying to pay mortgages, blinking houses and assorted efforts to render consumerism as Christ-like as possible. For those who celebrate Christmas, nothing can compete with joyous hope of the actual holiday. For everyone else, the promise of a return to normal…

To continue my annual tradition of writing about the year’s top words and how they shape our world I will have to explain not just the word, but the very concept of “emoji” to many, many grandmas and grandpas, including my own, who will read these words as ink on paper. If I survive, and…

When leaders in Northern Minnesota talk about the importance of our young people, the words often dressed in paternalistic tone. You get a sort of verbal head pat that would make most anyone blush or roll their eyes. In any case, the conversation is generally one-sided. Elected officials on the Iron Range, especially in local…

Talking weather in Northern Minnesota is dangerous business. There is very little chance of being right about anything. Conditions change too quickly to allow anyone but a hibernating bear to be properly prepared. In short, conversations about weather are just meaningless filler between meaningful nonverbal grunts, the sounds actual Minnesotans use to communicate language, art…

Like most Iron Range children of the 1980s, I once dreamed of a future in my state’s metropolitan area of Minneapolis and St. Paul. My family’s rare visits to the Big City bright lights, shiny tall buildings and teeming freeways were such a contrast to the dull world of trailer houses, shuttered windows and forever…

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…