Our first spring in Minnesota came late. It had not been much of a winter, in fact we felt fairly blasé about our capacity to survive Minnesota’s fabled frigidity. (But oh, how we have learned since!) The torrents pouring over St. Antony Falls inspired no particular shock nor awe, unlike the ceaseless roar of Spring … Read more
There’s nothing quite like a Door County Fish Boil to kick off the summer. Up on the sandy Wisconsin peninsula that’s known as the Martha’s Vineyard of the Midwest, a warm Friday night is nothing without a cold can of beer and a steaming kettle of fish. It’s a steadfast tradition and comforting and safe. … Read more
The early monks of the Egyptian desert often faced their demons head on. Abba Antony in the hot sandy silence of the wilderness found himself attacked by several wild beasts at once. They roared and hissed, they buffeted his makeshift cell until it shook. He stared them down. They gnashed their teeth and left. Often, … Read more
What a funny quirk of verbiage that a bum car is called a “lemon.” There’s even a “Lemon Law” to protect us from people selling used vehicles with hidden flaws. This assumes the worst about people and, I think, slanders lemons. Calling a car a lemon should be a great compliment, akin to linking its … Read more
Those few of us who spend our working lives in the Roman Empire find current events depressingly familiar. The superpowers of Late Antiquity, Rome and Persia, spent much of the half-millennium before the rise of Islam at war. The Persian Empire incorporated not only modern Iran, but also Iraq. The cockpit of imperial confrontation was … Read more
She’s bumpy and oddly shaped, often times covered with a film of dirt. She prefers the dark, the underground areas. She’s like the slightly stinky kid in class who keeps to herself but gets all her work done on time. You think you know her—she’s simple and hard working, maybe a little bland. And then … Read more
It always seems to happen on a Friday. The phone rings and someone says, “Do you speak Latin?” and I reply “Well, I teach it,” or something equally noncommittal. Then comes the question. “What is the Latin word for ‘color’?” Phew, that’s easy. “Color, spelt the way Americans spell it.” “Well what’s the Latin for … Read more
My inner Mothra would be so proud. I had no fears that the gorgeous Icelandic woman sitting next to my husband at a dinner party was any competition for me, but that didn’t stop me from engaging the table with jokes told in rapid-fire English that I was sure she couldn’t get. It’s not bad … Read more
I recently spent a sad evening in a basement in South Minneapolis. An acquaintance was seeking subsidised legal advice about the custody of his children. He had found it pretty difficult uncovering a voluntary agency able to offer advice to men on such matters. But now here he was with six other unfortunates waiting his … Read more
It was a very snowy January when I ran away to Prague. The family I stayed with lived in one of a cluster of monolithic stone apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city. The grey air outside the buildings smelled of coal and smog, and the air inside smelled of tea and cabbage. Each … Read more