According to some in the business, Minnesota’s nursing home system is in financial trouble in large part because people seem to think that no matter what their net worth, when it comes time for long-term care, they have a right to go on the dole. “Well,” they say as they set up a way to [...]
About 20 years ago, I reached a fork in the road. It was time to either commit to the small town, join the family business and try to make a go of it, or use my education to find a career in the suburbs. Most of my peers were long gone. To visit friends from [...]
As the swamp in front of my house in Minnesota springs back to life, I think back to the truly odd history of wildlife in New Zealand. Completely isolated for eons of time, New Zealand developed a strange ecosystem which went undisturbed by man until the first humans arrived in roughly 1250 AD. In its [...]
Provocative Korean-born violinist Hahn-bin pranced and preened his way across the wood floor of the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks last Sunday as a part of the NDMA’s annual concert series. “American classical music audiences are half asleep,” the unusual prodigy said in a recent interview, adding that it is the performer’s [...]
Many years ago while browsing the bookstore, I ran across a book which contained the addresses of famous sports legends. Well! It was the middle of winter and I had nothing better to do, so I bought the book, sat down and wrote letters to some of my favorite old ball players. Willie Stargell. Carlton [...]
While president of Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson asked a group of alumni a provocative question: Would Abraham Lincoln have been a better president if he had been college-educated? Wilson answered his own question with a resounding “no.” Since Wilson’s time, a college education has become a minimum requirement for many jobs, even if the skills [...]
Last week, I sat down for a comforting dinner of baked chicken, escalloped potatoes and delicious bread pudding at a senior center over 100 miles from home. I didn’t know anybody in the room, so I made conversation by asking people where they were from, what they did, and so on. A jolly man at [...]
Everybody has their horror story about unions. “Of course, he’s union, so you can’t get rid of him,” is the usual punch line after a story about some guy who wouldn’t lift a finger to fight a fire at work because fighting fire wasn’t in his job description. Even when 19th century workers organized to [...]
On Monday, we celebrated President’s Day. It caused me to reflect upon some of the characters we’ve elected to lead us over the years. One character in particular was really over-the-top. An enthusiastic fist-fighter, he took on all comers in bare-knuckles boxing matches, many of them staged by notorious gamblers. He won every match, sometimes [...]
World-class violinist Joshua Bell played at Centennial Hall just a few blocks down the street in Tucson last weekend. Bell doesn’t just play a mean fiddle. He is also a savvy marketer. His record company splashes his telegenic face all over his albums, which have sold millions and won many Grammys. As for his fiddle, [...]
