My heart sank a little when I heard. We knew it was coming. Baseball will be little less human and a little more mechanical. I’m talking about Major League Baseball adopting the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System for next season. Teams will be allowed to challenge a ball-strike ...

My wife and I couldn’t go to Chicago, so Chicago came to us. I’m talking about the iconic rock band, not the city. In this case “iconic” can be interpreted as “old enough to involve carbon dating.” The band Chicago Transit Authority was formed in 1967, the year I turned 10. That ...

Many hearts are bleeding today. Denny Warta — who died just shy of his 98th birthday—had many friends. His circle included the young and the old, the famous and the unknown, the rich and the struggling. A Nobel prize winner and a nomad, a Native American chief and a new immigrant, a ...

Food can transport you into the past or push you forward. But there are some situations where food can cause familial friction. At least that’s how it’s been for forty-some years with my wife and me. The foodstuff that’s been at the center of our domestic distress is ...

Early November is a time to look ahead; to the holidays, the upcoming new year and the first snowfall of the season. People were talking about the first snowfall a week ago. It looked like the Marshall area might get at least one or two inches. It wasn’t supposed to be a snowstorm, just a ...

When I was young, diversity meant that I knew some Lutheran kids. Around here, we were mostly German descended with a scattered few Irish and British. Norwegians lived by Hanska. Native Americans lived on the reservation. The Sleepy Eye of my youth is gone. Hispanic families started coming ...