Well, it finally happened. I talked to the beans.  Gardening does not come naturally to me. I was raised on my family’s junkyard where vegetation grew mostly out of spite, certainly without the aid of human hands. But in recent years I’ve taken over the role of household gardener from my wife after she classified…

Early in my teaching career I invited my community college students to introduce themselves on the first day of class. One young woman said, “I’m a horse person.” For some inexplicable reason this made no sense to me. “Horse person?” I replied incredulously. “Yes,” she said. “Horse.” “Yeah.” “Person.” “That’s right.” “Like, a centaur?” I…

It occurs to me, for all the rugged off-roading we see in television ads, we never see a vehicle driving down a gravel road in northern Minnesota just before the frost thaws. There’s a reason for that. These magical pickup trucks and all-terrain sport utility vehicles seem to work just fine spraying a perfect wave…

The John Prine song, “Spanish Pipedream,” contains a legendary piece of advice, delivered by a topless dancer to a wayward soldier crossing the Canadian border. Prine begins, in the voice of the sage stripper, “Blow up your TV.” The song goes on from there, but the gist is that by ditching the modern distractions and…

Washing out an empty container of Country Crock Light the other night I took time to read the sides of the tub. To be honest, it was difficult to tell what the product actually is at first.  I mean, I know what it “is.” Fake butter. Fewer calories than butter, which is why it’s in…

One particularly amusing online cartoon, though a bit crass, features three anthropomorphic drinking glasses sitting in a row. The first one, a happy fellow, says, “I’m half full.” The second slightly more dour chap says, “I’m half empty.” The third, in complete consternation, shouts, “I think this is p…!” Well, let’s just say it’s another…

Al Sleet, the hippy-dippy weatherman portrayed by comedian George Carlin, once offered the only fully accurate forecast: “Dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.” You can quibble about cold and warm, snow or rain, but you can’t argue with the rotation of the earth on its wobbly axis. Our dog Daisy knows…

Politicians possess some of the longest memories I’ve ever encountered. As someone who’s written political opinions for more than 20 years, I sometimes meet political operators still mad about something I literally forgot writing. Politics is a grudge business, with loyalty a commodity to be traded like oil and stored in strategic reserves. And yet,…

My memory of the Cold War comes with a strange and oddly specific recollection. I was a kid when the Soviet Union broke up. Like most American kids, I was raised on a steady diet of patriotic fervor with a dose of casual fear that our Russian adversaries might infect us with their wicked worldview.…

Just over 100 years ago the Babcock Trunk Highway opened to motorists. In doing so, a network of bumpy local roads became a paved highway that united the towns of the Iron Range.  It wasn’t like our highways today. The Babcock went through, rather than around, most towns. The locals rather insisted on that. But…

A few weeks ago my family got sick. Several of us had runny noses, sore throats and fevers. Given the times, we wondered exactly what we caught. Was this COVID-19 or something else? We went to the clinic to be tested. There we saw a nurse and a doctor. They administered a nasal swab, looked…