Opinion
An EF-1 wedge tornado near Silver Lake, Minnesota, on July 28, 2019. (Jarrod Schoenecker photo)
If you don’t know from my first column, I am an avid weather guy. Not just the casual “I like to know the weather today” guy. I am the guy who is really into weather, severe weather to be exact.
I’m a storm chaser but it goes beyond that. I am the president and had been the newsletter editor for...
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me… A Weight Watchers gift certificate.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me… A new camera bag.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me… Some dye to turn my grey beard back to brown.
On the fourth day of Christmas my...
My grandfather, Corporal Wesley P. Barclay, as seen in a newspaper clipping, after he was home and freed from Nazi prison camps in 1945.
One night, a couple weeks ago, I had a nightmare. Dreams or remembrance of dreams I may have had is a rare occurrence for me. In my nightmare, I stood in a hazy old air hanger, gymnasium, or some similar building. Somehow I knew that the Nazis were coming to look for me and take me away, as if I...
I remember being scared to go down into my family’s unfinished basement by myself when I was young.
My family’s rule was that you could only have one can of pop a day, and I wanted my quota, but the pop was stored down in the basement. Getting one required me racing down the steps, averting my...
There is nothing more welcoming than going home after your first day at a job that requires typing as main function than to cut your fingertip. I managed to accidentally cut myself Wednesday evening while removing a knife in a cardboard sheath from a new box of kitchen knives. I can vouch that the...
They say the world is becoming more modern all the time and technology will make things more convenient. Oh really?
Wednesday, a trip to the University of Minnesota for a state swimming meet. While driving to the ‘U’ is no big deal, a byproduct of growing up in St. Paul, there is always some...
At the Monday, October 24 school board meeting, there were comments made during the
open-forum regarding the district’s equity training that, as the superintendent, I would like to
respond to. I would publicly like to explain the facts around equity and training for our teachers.
The word “equity”...
As a high school freshman growing up in St. Paul during the mid- to late-1970s, New Prague was one of those far-away towns in Minnesota, a small city on the map we’d never heard of thanks in part to our provincial view of the world. Back then, a trip anyplace south of Interstate Highway 494 and...
We’re rookies.
It’s obvious that my husband, John, and I need to step-up our game now that both of our daughters, Anna and Ellen, are active in school sports.
Our 8th grader plays tennis.
Our 5th grader plays volleyball.
Two kids. Two sports.
It shouldn’t be that difficult for two parents to follow...
Anyone who has seen the police drama “Hill Street Blues” will remember that usually one of the first scenes of each episode was a sergeant giving a duty list to a room full of police officers, plus other information that would show up later in the episode. At the end he would remind his officers, “...
