January 2022

The birds are looking extra puffy this morning. Mighty nippy out there. And, of course, this was the morning I misplaced my choppers. I bought them a couple of years ago in a Clearance bin at an Alexandria grocery store. Good deerskin mitts with fleece inside. I ended up buying many pairs after friends tried mine. Fortunately, I have an extra pair that is a little big for me, but it worked well this morning. Temp was near -20 when Patton and I made our round in Milan. But, we got it done.

After months of having to hear from my mother, my sister, my grandmother, and my husband how terrible my previous column photo was, I decided to change it. Not because I thought it was terrible, because honestly, who cares? My column picture isn't a beauty contest, and I'm 40. I hardly see why it makes a difference. However, I just got sick of hearing how "old" I looked from all of them - thus, here's a quick photo from my porch featuring my seventeen-year-old hat that I originally purchased at the Minnesota Newspaper Association. This hat was a purchase made the very first time I attended the convention. Back then I was just a young, perhaps overly ambitious newspaper owner who was asked to speak, as a part of a panel, to a group of journalism students about the nitty-gritty of what living a life of journalism is like.