opinion

On Sept. 23, Crosslake Planning and Zoning will consider Gerald Woody's request for nine variances on County Road 16, government lot 2, section 17, to build a 1,040-square-foot house, 958 square-foot deck and 676 square-foot garage. This is not in keeping with the neighborhood, environment...

This presidential election season has been going full speed for the past year with Senate and congressional following close behind. It is distressing to see the same old players spouting their same old rhetoric - "This politician is ineffective," and "That politician is not truthful"...

The most anticipated event of the 2016 presidential campaign will take place a few days from now, on Monday, Sept. 26, when the first of three 90-minute televised presidential debates between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will occur. The one vice presidential debate between Mike...

I learned when stopping in at the Pequot Library that two of my highlighted-self-help books had been checked out, and the permanent library copy had been moved to fill the spot of the two checked out, next to the Korean translation copy "Temporo mandibular joint." This is good news!...

As someone who is borderline Gen X and Millennial (having grown up in Park Rapids, I find myself tending a little bit more toward the Gen X direction - which, according to most classifications, I technically am by a whopping two weeks), as someone who grew up not attending church,...

It is said that if you give a man enough rope, he will hang himself. A corollary appears to be, if you let a politician speak long enough, he or she will cut himself or herself off at the knees. Charles Dickens' novel, "A Tale of Two Cities," was set in London and Paris before and...

As anyone who reads newspapers - or watches TV, or listens to the radio, or collects mail from the mailbox, or notices billboards along the highways - knows, election season is in full swing. We voters are being bombarded with information. We read stories in the newspaper and online....

Well, as the Gipper would say, the sky has fallen on the 2016 Minnesota Twins. Some of you may remember that I made my yearly Minnesota Twins baseball forecast way back in April. I waited until spring training was over, and I checked with my sources who live down in Fort Myers in...

A recent letter to the Echo Journal makes an unpersuasive argument for the debacle that the Democrats caused at the end of the 2016 regular session. First, the House and the Senate agreed on compromise for the bonding bill. This meant that leadership from both the House and Senate...

Paging through a book of essays by the late journalist Sidney Harris, I came upon some thoughts that seem particularly relevant to our time - a time when an alarming number of citizens proudly flaunt their ignorance, claiming their lack of knowledge or experience somehow qualifies...

The Pequot Lakes Patriots softball and tennis teams would like to thank Pequot Lakes Supervalu and community members for their support during the recent fundraiser held at Supervalu over Labor Day weekend. The kindness and generosity shown by everyone is deeply appreciated. Patriots...

Have you ever felt like you were at the "top of your game," feeling fantastic, and then everything began to crumble? A professional golfer experienced that feeling. He had shoulder surgery, life was good, and then his shoulder pain returned. The timing couldn't have been worse. He...

I'm not talking about the state of our upcoming presidential election (though that is disappointing too). I'm talking about food harvesting. As some are aware, the last three years I have held wild food classes once a month. Last year, lack of participants made our outings dwindle...

Politics are funny business. My columns over the years have not taken political sides mainly because I believe, right or wrong, that my readers have enough of this gibberish on their plates already. The media is full of politics on an election year, and that's probably enough. But,...

My first truck was a very old Chevy. It had a cassette player, and included was an old cassette tape titled "Country hits of the '70s" or something like that. That is how I was introduced to Lynn Anderson's "Rose Garden." At that time, it was the only cassette tape I owned, and soon...