The frogs and robins are back. I’m not suggesting the frogs hopped their way to Florida for the winter, but suffice to say they’ve wakened and crawled out of their muddy beds. The robins, meanwhile, bounce around on my lawn and I apologize to them for the cold weather we […]
Columnists
It’s Monday morning and I have a hell of a lot to write about; and a whole lot of it that I really don’t want to write about, some of it that I do, and some of it that I am compelled to write about. So in lies my dilemma. […]
It seemed that March wanted to go out like a lion with that miserable dump of snow we saw at the end of last week. The barnyard had been decent up until that point but now it’s a sloppy mess. For me it’s the worst time of the year to […]
After the summer workouts, the training camps, the exhibition contests, the regular-season affairs, and the playoff rounds, here we are. This Sunday night in Spooner, the SIJHL season will begin its final chapter as the best-of-seven series to determine this year’s Bill Salonen Cup champ gets underway between the Wisconsin […]
After many months of hard water on our lakes and rivers, things finally are starting to bust loose—and slowly but surely, we’ll all be in boats sooner than later. By the looks of things, we are going to break all kinds of records on ice-out dates for the big lakes […]
Another summer-like week here in Rainy River District! I had a big list of inside jobs (i.e., income tax) but I found myself not so interested in being inside. So “Roxee” and I pretty much walked around all our fences and replaced staples and wires as needed. I was hoping […]
By Melanie Mathieson
The Gardening Guru
The Gardening Guru
With the unusual warm weather, all of the snow gone, and the lake ice starting to break up, many people are itching to get outside and start gardening. I also share the enthusiasm for the extraordinary weather, but you have to be careful not to get ahead of yourself with […]
The writing tide has gone out and it’s not flowing back in a timely fashion in my neck of the woods this week. Today my “write” mind is as the rusty burn barrel that’s sitting upside down on the south side of the old red barn in my farmyard. There’s […]
I knew Hinderika Sieders the way children know adults. She was Mrs. Sieders to me; I’m not sure I ever knew her first name. I watched her from a distance, from the perspective of being a visitor in her home, a friend of her children. She was the mother of […]
While many New Democrats were focused on our hotly-contested leadership campaign over the weekend, many also were trying to shift their attention to what is sure to be a landmark federal budget presentation tomorrow (March 29). Finance minister Jim Flaherty, who can’t or won’t tell us how much his mega-jails […]
Editor’s note: Marie Snider began writing this column 20 years ago. Here is her first column that appeared in The Newton Kansan on Wednesday, March 18, 1992. “This Side of 60” began syndication in August, 1992. Life on this side of 60 is fun! Oh, I know life isn’t supposed […]
Our family’s first boat was a Admiral Peterborough cedar skiff and every year my father would begin working on it in our backyard. The bottom was covered in fibreglass, as was the stern. It was green. The rest of the boat had a Spar varnish finish. We couldn’t begin work […]
