Awaiting a new season

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One of the duties on a quick visit to the home farm near Berlin, North Dakota was to harvest the last of the landfalls off the apple tree beside the house.


This was a good year for apples – at least for three of the four trees on the homestead – but very few of the apples were salvageable, mostly landfalls that either rotted or were partially eaten by one critter or another. Continue Reading

Musing about taxes

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I’d consider Gerald Harris, editor/publisher of the LaMoure Chronicle and a couple of other North Dakota weekly newspapers, a friend, even though I have only met him in person one time, and then briefly, and even though we may well walk different paths ideologically.


But when I get to his town to visit my relatives, one of my must-buys is his newspaper, and I buy it so that I c Continue Reading

The tyranny of the minority; and the (theoretical) power of the majority

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Last night on the national news of one of the Big Three (CBS, NBC, ABC) I watched a reporter contextualize for viewers the conflict over allowing 2000-era federal tax cuts to sunset (expire) for those earning over $250,000 a year. The over-$250,000 group is said to represent about 2 percent of American taxpayers. For the rest of us, the holiday would continue.

Continue Reading

A close encounter with a mosque

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The abundant insanity (that’s what it is – insanity) around the proposed (and approved) Islamic Center in lower Manhattan caused me to revisit a significant time in my youth.


In the summer of 1953 I was about to enter 8th grade. Continue Reading