What is it about Americans and guilt? Mr. Bush, it seems, may now be willing to admit that the world is warming up. But he would not have us think that the human race (let alone its industries and motorcars) is in any way responsible. Mustn’t feel bad about it, must we? This is strange … Read more
Remember Cook’s Choice? It was the most dreaded day on your school lunch calendar. The lucky ones brown-bagged it; the rest of us stood in line for a meal we knew had been planned by a Lunch Lady surveying the walk-in cooler and reading expiration dates. As we bravely offered up our trays for a … Read more
Every time I take the boat down Stranraer Sound, I think of Saint Brendan. A Celtic monk, Brendan set sail toward the setting sun with fourteen of his confreres in a whimsical endeavor to find the Island of the Promise of the Saints. Spoilsports (i.e., my academic colleagues) tell you his charming tale is an … Read more
The tradition of growing grapes is almost as old as the hills on which they’re planted. But when we picture those vine-covered hills, most of us would sooner conjure Tuscany, Bordeaux, or the windswept Carneros Valley of California than Hastings, Minnesota. Yet increasingly, places like Hastings, Putney, Vermont, and Long Island, New York, are being … Read more
The three best reasons for being an academic, as is well known, are June, July, and August. Especially on the occasions when the University of Minnesota conspires with the McKnight Foundation to allow one to spend those months reading and writing about a really genial poet for instance, a character from the Later Roman Empire … Read more
There are people who would rather die than give up chocolate, and there are those who can’t imagine a day without television. For me, a life without cheese is simply not worth living. How can you get through the day without a dense bit of manchego, a smear of Humboldt Fog, or a downy shaving … Read more
How I hate modern motor roads. Come let me count the ways. First there is the intimate shame of personal inadequateness. I know my reactions while driving are not swift enough to be safe at fifty-five miles per hour—in fact, they are unsafe at any speed, as my family says. All too often I will … Read more
How is it that so many of us draw no association between the salty, crunchy tidbits from Granny’s relish tray and fresh cucumbers that came from the earth? Is it possible to get so far away from a once-common practice that we no longer even recognize the result? Pickling used to be a seasonal activity … Read more
Watching people in museums is often as absorbing as studying the displays. Some years ago, my old tutor was standing under the great sixth-century dome of the Holy Wisdom in Istanbul, lecturing to a rather tweedy group of English country gentry. His audience was starting to suffer from museum leg, when a pigeon detached itself … Read more
How does one achieve a legacy? In the American landscape of opportunity, it seems almost a requirement that we leave something behind to influence succeeding generations—something that symbolizes our struggles, something that tells a story of character and risk and ambition. In nineteenth-century Hastings, that idyllic river town south of St. Paul, William Gates LeDuc … Read more