Finding Her Redwood Tree

My daughter Clare turned twenty-seven years old last month. Her birthday made me wonder where I was and what I was doing when I was the age that Clare is now. Adding twenty-seven to my year of birth revealed that the year was 1981. It was January 1981 when I put my...

8.5 US, 42 European

When I moved to western Wisconsin in 1993, I thought that the cities of La Crosse, Wisconsin and Rochester, Minnesota were similar to each other. La Crosse had two universities (which Rochester did not have), and Rochester had the Mayo Clinic, but otherwise the two...

No Kings

I went to our local No Kings Rally on Saturday. It was the first time I attended an anti-Trump protest. As much as I support the good intentions of the people who have been involved all along, as much as I appreciate that there have been a few thousand La Crosse...

Breaking Through the Ice (Part II)

In last week’s blog, I told two stories about breaking through winter ice. This week I want to stay with the same topic. The following describes two other times I went through the ice, plus one time I worried I might go through, but then did not.  Story No. 1 When I...
Steven Simpson