Author: Dan Gilchrist

“It’s not really about art at all,” said Brian Johnson about his detailed and intricate chain saw carving techniques. “In fact I’m very big on that idea.” Johnson is tall and burly, a sawdust-covered guy who is as animated as his sculptures are static. “At best I’m a craftsman, not an artist. Isn’t that right,…

Unlike previous generations, who must have been chronically dehydrated by comparison, many young people today feel a need to carry around their own personal water supply clipped to a backpack or a shoulder bag. They often use a brightly colored plastic bottle with a screw-on cap known by its ungraceful brand name: Nalgene. These bottles…

Michael McDermott and his family may have been the only people to move out of Seattle in the early 1990s, when that city’s high-tech grunge cachet was at its peak. The McDermotts moved to an abandoned dairy farm in Kelliher, Minnesota. The place was soon hopping with strange cattle—tall, hairy bovines with big horns, which…

To lots of people, John Kerry often looks as if he’s brooding or unhappy. But that’s just his neutral expression—his thinking face. Throughout the early primaries, pundits wondered if Kerry “had enough Elvis” to be prez. For that matter, do any of us have enough Elvis? If you can’t impersonate Elvis, then you could do…

If the title of patron saint of journalists were not already held by the seventeenth-century French priest Francis de Sales, many American reporters would be ready to canonize Professor Jane E. Kirtley of the University of Minnesota for her steadfast support and defense of their work. Through a serendipitous career as a reporter, attorney, advocate,…

Remember the good old days of mom-and-pop bookstores? Back when Ruminator had healthy operations in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, we might have walked in the door, charged right up to the counter, and asked a real person: Can you tell which city readers are from by the books they buy? With the recent unpleasantness,…