Down on the Farm

A message from the old fogies to the younger generation: Don't mess with our settings! Just when you get on friendly terms with your computer, some kid sits down at...

Last week, I spoke to a women's gathering at an area Lutheran church. I arrived good and hungry because those Lutherans can really put on a spread. But when I...

Last month, I met for the first time a 23-year-old shirt-tail relative in Los Angeles named Sarah. Fully-employed in a well-paying job she loves, Sarah is the face of our...

Spring is arriving slower than the last day of school in sixth grade. If delayed gratification develops adulthood, most of us in the northland will be grown up and a...

The trek from California through the mountain states towards home landed me in Billings, MT mid-day last week. I stopped for a quick bite to eat, then ordered a souped-up...

For all the congestion in its populated areas, the bulk of California's land area is wilderness, some of the most spectacular wilderness in the lower forty-eight states. The Big Sur,...

The white flakes blowing across the freeway in California's Central Valley looked like snow, but the temperatures were in the 80s. The flakes were petals blowing from thousands of almond...

The last day in Arizona featured the best and worst of customer service and business management. First, a hotel from the nether regions. I won't name the establishment because I...

With fifteen major league baseball teams training in the Phoenix area, you would think that a baseball fan would be in heaven, racing from ballfield to ballfield collecting autographs and...

Snowbird luck: I flew back from Arizona to Minnesota for an important meeting only to get snowed in and miss the meeting which suddenly didn't seem important at all! The...

The Super Bowl rendered the usually crowded freeways of Phoenix, Ariz. as quiet as I-29 during a blizzard. Even Christmas can't command such a complete shutdown of the American automobile...

As he approached his seventieth year, the great architect Frank Lloyd Wright endured a bout of pneumonia during a Wisconsin winter. "You could add twenty years to his life," his...