Thanks for Clinton Collins, Jr.’s comments on gay marriage [Free the Jackson Five, March]. It’s admirable that he uses his column in a way that reflects compassion for people in general. I should mention that I’m straight—not that it matters except that it shows that I’m writing purely out of a desire to commend Clinton … Read more
At 7:20 a.m., on a hilltop overlooking the wooded highlands in Minnesota’s Iron Range, a dozen men and women emerge from parked cars, some wide awake in flannel and Carhartt, some weary in khakis and button-down shirts. A few discuss the Wild and the politics in nearby Ely; others trouble over germanium crystals and liquid … Read more
Each of the offices in the ten-story Ceresota Building on Fifth Street is, like a lot of offices these days, an island unto itself. Each floor of the converted flour mill holds three tenants at most. Some, like the Cooper Law Firm, take up an entire story. So despite the common first-floor cafeteria, interoffice communication … Read more
Have the tabloid presses grown tired of seeing half-naked celebrities? Is this why we’re now treated to magazine covers and E! exposés featuring half-naked pregnant celebs, ingratiatingly demeaned by references to their “bump” and newly pneumatic breasts made up like toy poodles for a best-in-show event? In all seriousness, I don’t look for intelligent journalism … Read more
With Martha Stewart behind bars, I thought for a moment that it might be a good opportunity to launch Jem Casey Living Omnimedia, but I see now that it would never work. I’m not exactly clueless, but my tastemaking skills are, well, suspect. Everyone already likes what I like. I’m not talking about motorcycle jackets … Read more
Never mind light rail. Imagine your Volkswagen-sized vehicle is traveling fifty miles an hour on a three-foot-wide guideway. Twenty feet below are people on a sidewalk. There is a vehicle a few feet in front of you. You can see the woman in the car behind you reading the newspaper and sipping her coffee. Then … Read more
After playing guitar by himself for twenty-odd years, Tom O’Connor found himself in a rut. “I’m tired of knowing three chords,” he said, grinning. “And I wanted to play with other people. I’ve been playing to my plants and my furniture and my kids; my kids stopped listening to me, and I thought, ‘You know, … Read more
I was at my local the other day with Don, Pete, and Ben, having a beer. Seems like it’s been months since we were able to get together and just be guys. We have dinner parties with the wives, sure. And even though the gents always end up in the kitchen and the ladies end … Read more
Greeks and Romans thought the world looked like a fried egg. There was land in the middle, wholly surrounded by Ocean, with a sea (appropriately called the Mediterranean) bisecting the land. Even in the early Middle Ages, fishermen in what is now Normandy are said to have heard at dead of night the boats putting … Read more
From his Dust Bowl days in Oklahoma to the Columbia River in Washington state, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-1967) rambled a million miles by foot, thumb, boxcar, and in Liberty Ships—freighters hastily constructed for merchant-marine service during World War II. He wrote copiously along the way, “with his guitar hung around his neck like a tire … Read more