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A current favorite picture book of the two-year old is “Claude’s Big Surprise”, by David Wojtowycz. (Spelling quiz next Tuesday!) Claude is an anthropomorphic polar bear who lives with his family in the suburbs. The story is that the parents ship Claude to the North Pole to stay with a relative, while Mom heads to the hospital to give birth to the new baby, which is the ‘Big Surprise’ referenced in the title. My comp

Last February in New England. The snow, as predicted, falls all night. I wake with the alarm at 5 AM, don the warm and crappy clothes, and in the darkness I rev up the snowblower and proceed to clear the driveway. One hour later I am driving the Saturn Vue southward and westward. The morning snowfall is wispy and fog-like, and it collects in undulating patterns on the highway. Eventually I arrive in New Haven, Connec

The Stretch DC-9 had landed, taxied across the tarmac, and stopped just short of the gate. This model of airplane is properly called an MD-80, but I happen to think that Stretch DC-9 is a more descriptive and interesting name, so I’m sticking with it. I’m sure the pilot of the Stretch DC-9 announced something to us passengers, but we were parked for I-forget-how-many minutes, sitting in the dark, waiting

Originally published August 24, 2013. In my mind I have struck up friendships, or at least become temporary pals, with various sports celebrities, particularly those from my Minnesota childhood and young-adulthood. I imagine that I find common ground with amiable sluggers like Harmon Killebrew, Tony Oliva, and Kirby Puckett, as well as slick football dudes like Fran Tarkenton and Ahmad Rashad, and even the oh-so-cere

Norman had been on me for months to let a gun in the house, and I kept saying no. Then we scored some dollars with a lottery ticket. Not the jackpot, mind you, but real money, enough to grant a wish or two. I wanted a raised deck outside the kitchen, for barbecues and parties and outdoor living, like they show in the magazines. Norman continued going on about the gun. So I gave in, and we got both. Norman insisted th

His skin glowed the color of mocha cappuccino, his muscles tapered into drawn bows and steely arrows, and his long, flowing locks took flight and landed in rhythmic accompaniment to his pounding legs and buttocks. “Fergus Falls,” he whispered. The woman, a strawberry blonde, writhed somewhere underneath him. She was visible only in splotches of feet, hair, and hands, the latter clasped against the middle

In the movie “Jaws”, Richard Dreyfuss and Roy Scheider slice open a shark’s alimentary canal in search of human remains. They find a few fish, a tin can, a license plate from the state of Louisiana, but no undigested parts of people. Throughout the scene Richard Dreyfuss holds his nose and makes faces, conveying the idea that the shark’s insides stink to high heaven. The shark in this scene is

On a cold morning in January, in a year that most Fergus Fallsians had assumed lay only in the distant future, Mayor Mingalone sequestered himself in his sumptuous, mahogany-paneled office, where diligently he attempted to ignore the electronic sign blaring his city’s name through the window and instead to concentrate on the question at hand, which was whether or not to run for another four-year term. |||Fergus Falls

The hangover was from either liquor or depression. Probably both. They came as a pair, the L and the D, like a vaudeville act. They came especially during an Iowa winter, and especially during that horrible winter through which Marlene was suffering. The baby was six months dead and buried. Gary had driven off in the sedan with no signs of returning. Money was tight and getting tighter. Marlene had canceled the cable