Working people with children will tell you that child care is their biggest day-to-day challenge. The logistics are maddening and the cost is overwhelming. The stakes are no less than the well-being of the next generation. Yet, if you talk to child care providers, they’ll tell you the same thing. Frustrating logistics and high costs…

I’ve forgotten much about life between the ages of 10 and 13. I suppose there’s a psychological reason for that; something something brain development, something something puberty. A lot of it might be self-preservation. In most pictures from this time I resemble an oversized grub with greasy blond hair. I’m wearing sweat pants and Coke-bottle…

I like to watch old black-and-white movies. In these films you see several scenes involving jobs that no longer exist. People appear very skilled at these jobs. We are led to believe they made a decent living off them. But practically no one makes the same living in the same jobs today. In most cases…

We come here not to mourn the oven, but to bury it. Northern Minnesota author Aaron Brown relates the fiery final minutes of his family’s electric range.

Not all pillows are for sleeping. Some are just for show. Some we wrap in shams. Some we just don’t know. We lay our heads on beds of lies.

Something changed after the last act of “Hamlet.” The Danes became so mellow that they don’t even mind stepping on all the LEGO blocks they produce each year. If we’re to believe media reports, hygge is both the cause and the solution. These last few years we’ve heard the word “hygge” a lot more. Looks…

Each year I like to write about the top words for the previous year as determined by the Global Language Monitor, an organization that tracks actual word usage in global English. It’s important to note that global English is a broader topic than American English. In fact, for the first time this year the Global…