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The Pandemic Pack: A Visual Tale
Most people cope with a global pandemic by baking sourdough bread or learning a language they will never speak. I decided to fill my house with the highest-octane energy available in the canine kingdom: Rat Terriers. Looking back at the blur of the COVID years, when I was working remotely for the college and the
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Operation DayQuil: The Whiteout Run
The Whiteout Run The prairie doesn’t just blow wind; it screams. When you live on the edge of the great emptiness like we do in Fergus Falls, a sixty-mile-per-hour wind isn’t weather, it’s a physical assault. It hits the side of the house like a freight train made of ice, making the windows flex and
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The Sepsis Summer: A Minneapolis Exorcism
MINNEAPOLIS — There is a specific kind of arrogance that only exists in an 18-year-old male with a 3.9 GPA. It is a brittle, unearned confidence, the kind that assumes the world is merely a classroom waiting to be aced.In the late spring of 1997, I possessed this arrogance in spades. I was done with
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Monday Morning Status: The Bunker Mentality
The horoscope dropped a warning shot with the tea this morning: “Keep a low profile. Any attention is suspect.” Honestly? I didn’t need the stars to tell me that twice. After the weekend I just had, “low profile” sounds less like a restriction and more like a recovery plan. My head is still spinning a
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The Immaculate Confection
The Odd Couple: A Tale of Two Terriers To understand the magnitude of this impending litter, you have to understand the parents. This is not a match made in a kennel club; this is a romance novel written by a drunk geneticist. The Stud: Rocket Rocket is a Theodore Roosevelt Rat Terrier. If you aren’t
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The Driver’s License Standard: Surviving the Freeze on Lake Unknowing
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — The thermometer on the dash of the 2010 Toyota RAV4 read 10 degrees below zero before the wind chill was even calculated. Outside, on the frozen expanse of Lake Unk, the wind was howling, pushing the “real feel” down to a brutal minus 30. Most anglers were at home, waiting for
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The River Doesn’t Have a Manual
FERGUS FALLS, Minn. — They called it a “Vitality Factor” of 46. I call it being unable to sit still in a cold room. A recent comprehensive analysis of my psychological profile suggests I am a “Group I Integrative” personality. In the sterile language of corporate consulting, this means I am “restless and uneasy,” a
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💔 The Kind of Betrayal That Breaks You
When “In Sickness” Means “Bail Out” I have spent a great deal of time over the past decade keeping this story locked away. It is one of those deeply personal traumas that feels too ugly, too raw and too profoundly unfair to simply air out. Yet the weight of it, even 10 years later, is
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True Grit and the Art of Getting It Done
The Gospel According to Yankee Heath Cheese Listen up, because what I’m about to lay out isn’t just about a couple of days on the calendar; it’s a blueprint. It’s the very essence of what it means to be American, to live by a code of self-reliance, ingenuity, and a pure, unadulterated “get it done”
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Exercise by Yankee Heath Cheese: Real Work, Real Strength, Real Life
Forget the treadmills and the spin classes. For Yankee Heath Cheese, true exercise isn’t found under fluorescent lights; it’s forged in the wild, under an open sky, with mud on your boots and the satisfying burn of muscles earned through honest effort. My body isn’t sculpted by repetitions for the sake of it; it’s built
