Hans Eisenbeis

It’s nice to see former Senator Rudy Boschwitz still flying the flannel after all these years. Like any self-respecting legislator on the receiving end of a populist pink slip, he’s gone quietly into the private sector. There, the glad-handing, expense accounts, and corporate logrolling aren’t scrutinized by every craven reporter and party activist (as if … Read more

There certainly has been a lot of fuss lately about the health insurance crisis. A couple of weeks ago in the New York Times Magazine, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—a person who is guaranteed to get a rise out of excitable Americans on both ends of the political spectrum—set forth her case for reform. Again. She … Read more

Notwithstanding our love of the single-occupant automobile, we were very excited about the arrival of the light-rail train this spring. We love strolling down Fifth Street past the bright new Warehouse District station. It gaily announces the time and date on its prim marquees and generally looks as if it expects our train to shoosh … Read more

Mark Twain was being a contrarian when he said “great writing flatters all writers” because he knew that most writers are constitutionally incapable of this kind of largeness of spirit. Lesser writers—and we are all lesser writers—agree: That was easy for him to say. Those of us who write for a living are often guilty … Read more

We have a television in the office, a twelve-inch black and white job with rabbit-ears. This TV, recovered more than once from the garbage, is switched on precisely once a year: in March, during the state boys high school hockey tournament. We just can’t help it. If you were born and raised anywhere in this … Read more

February is high season for cross-country skiing around these parts. Minnesota and Wisconsin are the Mecca and Medina of this arcane sport. The American Birkebeiner in Hayward, Wisconsin (February 19; never mind Atkins, you better start carbo-loading today), is all the evidence we need that the nation—and much of the world, actually—comes here to celebrate … Read more

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the procedure. What they don’t tell you is that it’s basically having a kid, even though the kid is you. They all make it out to be a “perfect genetic copy,” they get all lathered about “genomic imprinting.” Yeah, but it’s a DNA snapshot of me in a … Read more

There is a subtle way to measure progress. Every time we head north to God’s country, we’re forced to bring along the cell phone. Normally, we refuse the electronic leash. But when we’re on the road in a secondhand mini-van full of kids, or when we’re trying to rendezvous with people who have already gone … Read more

The other day, we strolled down Hennepin Avenue and ducked into the city’s oldest bar. In a paneled backroom where we might have expected a billiard table, a small group of mystery writers had assembled to tipple and talk shop. Writers are normally solo artists, not given to fraternizing with the enemy. But mystery writers … Read more