Of all the daily chores my father performed on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth, the most vital to me each winter morning was his …
No one was shocked recently when the General Accountability Office (GAO) announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had overpaid farm…
Oats have been said to be a Scots crop. Oatmeal was our farmhouse habit, if more truthfully it was a religion. Our father consumed oatmeal eve…
My wife got me a nifty bird feeder for Christmas.
Have you found yourself looking for a comfortable winter coat that is sustainably produced? A warm coat that is perfect for formal events, pro…
My doorbell didn’t ring.
It always seems odd to use the final week or two of the current year as a platform to view the coming year. How does looking in the rearview m…
Despite an honest-to-goodness flood of evidence to the contrary, more than 100 million American adults continue to deny the existence of clima…
This Christmas morning, as the children gather round the tree, they’ll bypass the piles of presents in favor of an envelope tucked near the tr…
The Christmas tree was a scrub cedar hacked from the edge of the woods that bordered the farm. Big-bulbed lights, strung in barber pole fashio…
Editorial: The hand that feeds:
People have strange hobbies.
“What are you looking at?”
Each season, the celebration of Christmas has religious leaders and conservatives publicly complaining about the commercialization of the holi…
My dining table is a family relic, one I have gathered around my entire life. At parties, my siblings and I still crowd so close together we c…
It must have been the oatmeal that kept him going.
It’s an ever more uncomfortable fact for journalists like me that 67 percent of today’s media-consuming Americans do not have one paid-for sub…
We all know a few people who think of themselves as the smartest person in the room. We also know a handful of people who actually are the sma…
That’s what I’ll do if I ever get hungry again after Thanksgiving. Instead of eating, I’ll let the moon shine down my throat.
The White House’s latest effort to tackle the difficult problem of suicide among the military and veterans may be the comprehensive approach t…
Not many people or events lead both the New York Times and CBS’s 60 Minutes television broadcast on the same day. The still-building mess at m…
“When does winter start in Minnesota?”
It’s pretty common to read about something that happens somewhere else and assume that it doesn’t affect you. Something could happen hundreds …
I could have waited but I couldn’t wait.
The federal government can spend more money in 10 minutes than Congress, its watchdog, can track in 10 years. Still, Congressional oversight--…
In a galaxy far, far away (well, Sparta, Wisconsin), I entered the city’s local history museum, much to the chagrin of my children.
Was it Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick?
His name was Lyndon, pastor to the Liberty Corners Methodist kirk at the corner of County Trunk J and Old Amish Road. I was newly out of the s…