I wonder how many coincidences we notice during a day’s time. Amid all the disruption in today’s world, an upside to that same world is we now have some time to notice what’s previously gone unnoticed. How many “coincidences” have we not seen? How many serendipity moments have we ...

Over the years, I’ve attended wine classes, read many books and articles about wine and have taught some wine classes and, for some reason, the words of Augustine keep coming to me. The one theme that keeps coming forth in my ruminations is that I have faith in wine to reflect the world — ...

Believe it or not, there’s still a few winter constellations, most notably Gemini the Twins and Auriga the Charioteer hanging out in the western evening Marshall sky. Sharing that part of the heavens right now are the bright planets Venus and Mercury. They’re still putting on a great show ...

There’s a compromise reached in every relationship. My wife loves to cruise on the open water and I love to fish, so much so that the idea of being on a boat without a rod in hand is what I imagine hell must be like. So while I manned the helm of the party boat as we moved up and down the ...

I didn’t have the gumption to see it through, so I gave up on the project. My wife and I have been doing our best to maintain social distancing during this coronavirus situation. This meant forgoing haircuts, which gave me the perfect excuse to accomplish one of my life goals, namely, to ...

I’m not much for travel, even in the outdoors. Though it’s the safest way of getting from point A to point B, I sweat profusely while aboard just about any airplane, regardless of whether there’s fishing or hunting on the other side of the trip and often start dreading the flight back ...

There are days when I ask myself: “Who cares?” In a world full of chaos, concerns and the “C” word, does anyone care, and if they do, how do they show it? Loaded questions and I ask them because of the unsettled environment within which we currently exist. I write quite a bit ...

Every week day morning as I walk down Main Street from the Mainstay Cafe with my morning coffee in hand I’m reminded of the story I never got to write. I’m reminded as I walk past the Wooden Nickel on my way to the Independent office. Painters and other workers have been busy for weeks now ...

Many people you know from history are included in the book “Posterity: Letters of Great Americans to Their Children,” c 2004. The collector of the letters was Dorie McCullough Lawson, and the foreword is by her father, well-known historian David McCullough. Paula Nemes at the Marshall-Lyon ...

Spring brings with it the first trips out into a greening countryside. Whether sneaking off to a favorite shore fishing spot or hanging up some trail cameras to catch the first glimpses of a buck caught on a memory card, spring adventures often set anglers and hunters up against flora and fauna ...

There are times when I think the historical hermits had it right. All of us know what our lives are like today. We are concerned, at times overwhelmed, too many irons in the fire, the kids to attend to, and then there is the drain that comes with physical/mental and the current social ...

We are at that in-between time of year when the furnace runs in the morning and the air conditioning kicks in during the afternoon. We are paying to heat and cool the same air each day. I’m not complaining, though. We have finally thrown off the icy shackles of winter, clearing the way for ...

Three months ago I met up with Jeff Chandler and his son, Troy, on their Triple C Feeders farm outside Balaton to write about their beef operation for the Independent’s Ag2 special section that published on March 5. During the Feb. 6 interview, I remembered Jeff talking about outside ...

This week marks an important point of return. I don’t know if that’s a real term, but it’s far less ominous than “the point of no return,” which has had its share of dramas, dark songs and thriller type novels written about it. The point of return, however, is that point in time where ...

In times such as these we turn to things that are familiar and comforting. We long for things that seem permanent and unchangeable, such as the faces on Mount Rushmore or Cher. I am fortunate to have a familiar face that has been there for me across the decades, through rain and shine, in ...

Evening stargazing has lost its chill, but honestly, also a little of its thrill. The bright winter constellations continue their gradual exit out of the evening sky, not to be seen again in the evening until next autumn. Until about mid-June, the evening sky is in a bit of an intermission ...

April celebrates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behavior and create global, national and local policy changes. While this year, ...

One never knows what one will hear on a daily walk. I was in the midst of my daily walk and passed an acquaintance on the street. We waved across the way to each other, yelled to each other about what a nice day it was and then, it was said... “It’s only going to get better!” she ...

I’ve been on both sides of the wind in many of my outdoor adventures but none more notable than last week, when the well-worn mooring rope on the cleat of my boat broke and my boys and I had the stunning experience of heading down from the parking lot to the launch dock to see the old Lund ...

Some signs of our times: • A farmer friend told me that he just received his economic stimulus payment. “I’m going to use the money to buy hand sanitizer,” he said wryly. He noted that a local microdistillery recently switched from making corn whiskey to producing hand sanitizer. ...