Down on the Farm

My only Christmas gift purchases this year were at the Toys-R-Us store in Phoenix where I picked up some toys for kids I will never meet. I wasn't there on...

To the east of the Phoenix metropolitan area, a rugged national forest starts within ear shot of the major streets of Apache Junction. Within a ten minute drive, one's chief...

To the east of the Phoenix megalopolis runs the Old Apache Trail, which starts out harmlessly enough as Highway 87. As you wind your way through ravines and red cliffs,...

Last week the Grand Forks Herald reported that a parcel of farmland near Park River, N.D. sold for more than $10,000 per acre, a record in the state. The same...

November 11 is celebrated as Veteran's Day in the United States today. The date originally was known as Armistice Day to mark the end of hostilities on the Western Front...

So far, the November days have been uniformly gray. With the time change, darkness closes in abruptly in the evening. Those of us who survive on light power feel our...

With the Twins mired in last place, the urge to flip on the television this summer dwindled to nil. This is the second straight season where hopelessness has sprung eternal...

It may take several decades, but American football is going the way of cigarette smoking, forced into near extinction by mounting scientific evidence that the activity kills and maims. We...

There's talk in economic development circles these days of a "skills gap," the notion that people who graduate from high school or college aren't trained for the jobs that are...

School is in session, and with it comes a new round of rules and regulations designed more to keep the school out of the paper than to benefit the children...

Modern communication has improved to the point where I find myself yelling, "You're breaking up!" several times per day into my phone. That never happened in the old days with...

My plastic bottle of dish soap claims using their brand "saves wildlife." On the bottle's label, a mama duck cuddles a baby duck in a manner more designed to trigger...

As summer winds down, the boy in me dreads school. In August, my dreams at night revert to themes of missing the bus or of going to school in less...