Columns

I think we all know by now my opinion on back-to-school clothing. Namely, that the only thing missing from most back-to-school fashion collections for even the youngest children is a dimly lit stage and a pole.

Throughout my life, travel has been sort of hard to come by. Growing up on a demanding dairy farm meant there was never any free time in which to squeeze a vacation.

With many harvested small grain fields that weren't double cropped to soybeans now sitting idle, cattlemen still have an excellent opportunity to create high quality forages that may be grazed well into winter, and even next spring.

"One thing for sure," I declared, "I'm not renting one of these again." "Well, unless we can find one that's adjustable.

Do you know where your thousands - and on a national scale, hundreds of millions - of federally-mandated, non-refundable checkoff dollars go? It's a question Bobby King, policy director of Minnesota's Land Stewardship Project, asked when he viewed advertisements that attacked "anti-livestock activist groups" in the state on Minneapolis' powerhouse WCCO television station earlier this year.

You just never know when you'll have a brush with greatness, or in my case, great fear. As near as I remember, I was cleaning a high shelf in the bathroom when there was a flash of movement, a flutter, and my momentary thought "oh, why is there a big leaf up here?" before the "leaf" became coherent enough to make a beeline (bat line?) for my hair.

While reading through Good Poems for Hard Times, a collection of poetry selected and introduced by Garrison Keillor, I ran across a writing by Erica Funkhouser that could have been written by one of us.

(As told by Josie Steeb) I felt great picking up my repaired Escort at the garage and even better knowing that I had paid for the repairs myself.

According to my internal calendar, fall is about four months down the road yet. In reality, the fall harvest season is fast approaching.

Regarding the subject of etiquette, I once read that rules for social behavior don't exist to control people, but rather to make everyone feel comfortable.