Empty Water
As the family car drove past the beautiful blue-green lake, the boy wondered why no one was swimming in the lake. Why no ducks or geese paddled its rippling surface. Why no cat tails swayed along its shores. “It’s the … Continued
Minnesota Sandpiper Project
Two things in recent StarTribune articles sent mini-shock waves through my thoughts: first that Enbridge Energy in Calgary wants to add another pipeline to carry oil from the North Dakota tar sands under and near iconic Minnesota bogs and lakes and … Continued
Trout Lilies and Bakken Tar Sands Oil
I had a job to do this evening while it was light. Cleaning up a mess, a pile of stems and their roots clogged with dirt, pulled up from a patch of Trout Lilies. I will not tell you where … Continued
Another Silent Spring, a Spring Without Bees?
When Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962, she imagined a neighborhood so quiet as to be dead. All the birds gone due to DDT’s effect on thinning their shells and killing the worms and insects they ate. Today we … Continued
The Unbelievers – from Orchestras to Global Warming
Every time I try to remember my breakup from my first husband, there are loud voices, the two of us standing in the kitchen shouting, then phone calls when he pled with me not to leave. At least we were … Continued
Grass-fed Beef and Ladies Plates in Amsterdam and Bologna
Three thousand miles up, I’m sometimes at a loss for things to do. Recently, flying home from Italy via Amsterdam, I started reading the KLM packaging. Not only did the flight magazine tell me that Amsterdam’s Concertgewau orchestra hall is … Continued
Monarchs in the Mirror
My yearly summer jaunt up to the North Shore of Lake Superior used to run me home through a lazy blizzard of black and orange–not Iowa Hawkeye footballers, but Monarch butterflies on their way south and west. This year, I … Continued
A Cathedral in the Pines
My North Dakota cousins had one of the most beautiful churches I have ever entered–an outdoor cathedral in the pines. Air and sunlight fell down upon us. Breezes blew. Music and text, belief and sustenance rose into an immensity tempered … Continued
Wanna Know How I Beat the Heat and Saved $100 a Month?
Numero Uno: Gave up air-conditioning. Hated it anyway. Dried up the nostrils, made ears ring. Instead: we * Put in tight-fitting new windows with UV glass in the 1912 house.This meant winter and summer, the cold and hot stay … Continued
Clean Dirt: What You Learn Crossing an Ocean
Clean Dirt: What You Learn Crossing an Ocean He was young and full-faced, pleasant, with that mid-western regularity of speech–a young man on his way from the western edge of Iowa to Johannesburg, South Africa. I wasn’t going nearly so … Continued