On a recent tour of the Saint Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Courthouse, I learned about the rule of three in architecture and it sets off a riot act in my head on symmetry, design, and a modest rant about the Pittsburg Steelers.
Read moreCommunity Garden To Revitalize Mounds Park
A press release I wrote for the Dayton’s Bluff District Forum on a project I’ve been working on during this stupid period of unemployment.
Read moreThe Mystery Mailers Of Fillmore County, Minnesota
They aren’t regular junk mail. They aren’t advertisements or political fliers. They’re legit nuts, and unlike any piece of junk mail I’ve ever seen.
Read moreI was wrong about the Oxford comma (and the world)
Who says you can’t teach an old writer new tricks. With time, and a reduced metabolism, I’ve come to terms with my old nemesis: the Oxford comma. But something funny happened along the way, and I realized, I’d been going about this whole life thing wrong.
Read moreWhen the 2020 Minnesota State Fair is canceled, it can still be enjoyed virtually.
As a moth is helplessly drawn to an open flame, I am drawn to fairs. This is a comprehensive guide to the greatest fair on earth, the Minnesota State Fair.
Read moreLiberate Minnesota
The Liberate rallies were built on a kernel of truth — in a vacuum of leadership during an historic economic disaster and compounded by a pandemic of biblical proportions — and blossomed into a grotesque carnival of entitlements gone wild.
Read moreOn Seal Beach
“This paradigm shift I was enjoying on Seal Beach, I had to share with this fella, who only had to walk ten minutes to get here.”
Read moreHunting shared land
I wanted to know more about hunting. My friend Will took me to the Minnesota back country to show me around. Shots were fired.
Read moreTravis Russell and the phenomenon of flight.
While explaining his hobby of building model airplanes, flight and aeronautics, my dear friend Travis Russell illustrates the mystery of work—that something beyond the task, that consumes us and pushes us further, to work harder. Even when our better judgement tells us to sit on the couch and watch Raising Arizona.
Read moreAnthropology
I walked right past, remembering that cruel anecdote from that anthropology course—wondering if I am being filmed as part of a study on altruism and how some wicked people can just walk on by.
Read moreA family moves from Portland to Minneapolis
How to sum up the incredible and complex forces, both pushing and pulling, that would provoke a family to leave their beloved home for a new city, across the country?
Read moreMost bad companies are bad on accident. PODS are bad on purpose.
Like, they are terrible. Just absolutely awful. Danger. You'll have better luck carrying your household across country than we did when we moved from Portland to the Twin Cities.
Read moreHow I learned to get over myself and fall in love with malls
I love malls. This is an essay on how I came to fall in love with malls, accompanied by a series of pictures I shot in January, of Portland’s Lloyd Center Mall.
Read moreThe tantalizingness of mistake art
Whether we like it or not, art is all around us. If we’re paying attention, we might just have the opportunity to be its chaperone.
Read moreThe White Bicycle
For everyone who’s had a bike stolen: here’s to the one that got away.
Read morePourland
When the earthquake destroys the West Coast, those who’ve thought ahead and built themselves rain barrels to collect and store fresh water will also have to fend off the roaming hordes of looters.
Read moreThe Crowded and Empty Office
Perhaps the best work you can work is the work you can work when nobody else is at work.
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