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NU FIlm Society to screen “The Fabelmans”

NEW ULM – The New Ulm Film Society will close out its Steven Spielberg director series with the 2022 film “The Fabelmans,” the director’s most personal film to date. The screening begins at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 14 at the New Ulm Public Library. “The Fabelmans” is a coming-of-age drama about a young man, Sammy Fabelman (played by Gabriel LaBelle), who becomes enamored with filmmaking at a young age and how that impacts the way he views his parents, Mitzi and Burt Fabelman, played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano.  The movie begins in 1952 New Jersey with The ...

The gambling snare

There is a saying attributed to PT Barnum that goes like this: There is a sucker born every minute. One area of activity that this saying can apply to is gambling. How might it apply? The thought is that there is an inexhaustible supply of people who are willing to be exploited using games on which they can play and have fun, while they lose their money and make a profit for the casino or owner of the gambling house. The owners are correct in their assumption that there are lots of people who are quite comfortable and willing to lose their money. The owners may be confident ...

Digging for treasure

My brother Les, his son Dustin, and I recently embarked on a treasure hunt. We didn’t have a map like the Count of Monte Cristo, so there was a certain amount of random digging involved. Not by hand, of course. Les and I have reached the age where “work smarter, not harder” isn’t just a good idea; our weary bones and creaky joints have made it a necessity. We weren’t searching for silver or gold: the metal we were seeking was cast iron. And we’re talking about a level of digging that required the deployment of Les and Dustin’s excavator. In lieu of a map, Les and I ...

Signs of spring as Easter arrives

Spring comes in spits and sputters. A beautiful sun-basted day is followed by howling northwest wind, followed by snow/rain, followed by south wind, leading to a beautiful sun-basted day. Winter is slow to let go its grip. March can be unsure of its season. But it is April. Spring will win out. So much is going on out our doors. A green tint slowly colors the Earth. There are chirps and calls of birds we haven’t heard for months. They are returning from winter homes. Welcome back! I lifted a stone and hundreds of ants scurried about, unsure why their dark workspace was suddenly ...

First AI glance didn’t measure up to the art of writing

In the past week I had my first chance to experience AI (artificial intelligence) through my email server. Messages from my sister and friends now come with a suggested AI reply. All it takes is one click and you can reply to the message. There’s nothing wrong with the messages the computer suggests. They’re very well-rounded reactions. Still I don’t use them. I feel that I as a professional writer can do better than a machine. I can make a message more detailed and more descriptive. I can introduce new subjects that a computer can’t anticipate. Letter writing used to be ...

Trump never actually had a plan

When President Trump spoke at the Saudi Future Investment Initiative on Friday, he offered a pristine example of what he calls "the weave." What detractors take for incontinent verbal rambling is, in his own telling, genius-level embroidery of a rhetorical mosaic. While spinning his tapestry ...