Columns

From Where I Sit – Harvest Confessions

It’s confession time. Admit it ladies. We love running those combines! You may be demure little social butterflies for 11 months of the year. Or maybe, you are the more rugged, outdoorsy type. Or maybe, you are a 9-to-5 type of person to earn some off-farm income. It doesn’t really matter. If you’re anything like… Read more »

The Good Life – Our Destiny Is Our Own

It is an easy and perhaps natural human reflex to speak of what happens to us as being somehow out of our own control. “If only I had had the same opportunities as so-and-so,” we might say, “then my life would have been so much different.” Or, conversely, we may attribute our good fortune to… Read more »

Lost & Found – Everyday Strange

It’s four o’clock in the morning, and your half-awake/half-asleep brain is doing graceful dolphin leaps into uncharted waters. There are crazy unthought-of worlds unfolding all around you. There are mermaids singing somewhere beneath the eiderdown and luminous fish fin their way through the early morning aquarium light. Unable to remain beneath the surface of your… Read more »

Music To Eat Lunch To – Bill Talent II

Producer: Atlantic Records Tracks: 13 Rating: 10 Wow! The first Billy Talent album (2003) was a pleasant surprise to me, and I’ve only just got over that initial impression. Now here it is, Billy Talent II (2003), and there’s a whole new set of mind-numbing tracks to learn. Actually no, mind numbing is the wrong… Read more »

Dear Barb – Going Vegan

Dear Barb: I’m in my mid-twenties and am considering becoming a vegan. Almost everyone in my family has suffered from heart disease, including both of my parents. I’ve done some research and it seems eating a meatless diet is helpful in reducing cardiovascular disease. Also, as an animal lover, I have never really felt comfortable… Read more »

Lost & Found – Background Info

Classmate #1: Sure, I knew her. We all did. She was a real weirdo, always crying about something. I don’t think she ever had a bath. The smell was so bad, on field trips we had to keep the windows of the bus rolled down. Nobody ever wanted to sit next to her. If there… Read more »

From Where I Sit – A Check-up from the Neck-Up

As I go through my daily rounds, challenged by some events and buoyed by others, I find myself increasingly harking back to and taking solace in the immortal words of Ivanka. Ivanka, for the uninitiated, is the latest, greatest motivational speaker to hit the circuit. Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, and Zig Ziglar have got nothing… Read more »