SuperSitters!

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If you can’t see the page below, click on the PDF (Acrobat) file at the bottom of the page to see Minnesota’s best babysitters.

Cover Letters I'd Like to Send

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Jann WennerPublisher, Rolling Stone Dear Mr. Wenner, My name is Keith Pille. I am here to rescue you. Your magazine has become an atrocious ball of doo-doo, and I believe that nothing short of a top-to-bottom overhaul can restore it to its former glory. Please let me know a good time for me to show … Read more

The Taste of Place

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There is a Gresham’s Law in music; bad tunes drive out good. On Sunday you hear a competent choir render a subtle and melodious anthem by Herbert Howells. You are then obliged to join in a repetitive praise chorus of the sort whose words and tune suggest that the righteous are those who have enjoyed … Read more

A Bead on the President

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The other day, President Bush came to town to preach to a carefully preselected choir. Democrats and other issue pushers were exiled to a station about eight lanes of traffic away from the Xcel Energy Center’s sidewalk. The lefties chanted agendas and invited passing SUVs to honk. They carried signs that said things like “Kerry,” … Read more

Surprise!

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I’ve been to a few weddings this summer, and it’s interesting. It seems that most of my generation waited until our late twenties, even our thirties, to get married. Then we’re waiting another ten years to have kids—right when a woman is up against the wall, biologically speaking. Forty is when doctors really start to … Read more

Gourmet a Go-Go

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What price a good meal? The question posed in the preface of The American Home Cookbook of 1932 is readily answered by its publishers: “Barring the obvious cost of materials, there is that priceless ingredient—interest.” Oh, those sage prophets of cookery books replete with gems like deviled sardines and jellied venison. They had no idea … Read more

Looking for Mr. Goodbook

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I joined a book club. Okay, that’s not all. I joined not one but three book clubs—and left each as quickly as the last. I am a twenty-something female, and I love literature, I really do. It’s just that book clubs… I can’t make them work. My first was a summer fling, hosted by my … Read more

Let Them Bleed

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Somewhere between West River Road and Summit Avenue, blood will begin to seep through the shirts of a good many Twin Cities Marathon runners. It will seep from a particular part of the anatomy—their nipples—which makes this a delicate subject. It doesn’t happen spontaneously, as many non-runners might think. “This is caused by the abrasion … Read more

Organics, Continued

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WAR VS. DIPLOMACYIn defining “deep-organic” agriculture, Eliot Coleman sharply demarcates his position, but ultimately, and unfortunately, isolates himself in contradictions [“Can Organics Save the Family Farm?,” September]. He notes how metaphors of war and conflict have distorted farming, but then he falls into the same trap himself, seeing the conventional agriculture establishment as an implacable … Read more

The Hollow Victory

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Labor Day weekend marked the end of Wack the Iraq, a boardwalk game in the seaside town of Wildwood, New Jersey. (Its inventors must have assumed that customers untroubled by the game’s objective would also be unlikely to bristle at the gross grammatical insult of its name.) The game involved players shooting paintballs at live … Read more