Last summer, my big fluffy white sheepdog went for an expensive surgery to repair the ACL joint on her back leg, a procedure that came with a lengthy recovery process. She was confined to a crate for … [Read more...]

We lost a very good friend and trusted appliance repair guy last winter. Leland Powell has been coming to this house for 35 years to fix anything that could be plugged in. Lea was never sick a day in … [Read more...]

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote the poet. Or a cellphone, he could have added. I was a late adopter of cellphone technology, about three steps ahead of the Amish. My wife … [Read more...]

As I try to “age in place” these days, juggling a little bit of all the things I used to do, it strikes me that my chief function now is to fix things. I am still a writer, but a big part of my day is … [Read more...]

The April rains are on their way and they will wash away the towering walls of snow in a mad torrent. I will watch the ice floes drift down the coulee behind the house, taking with them fence posts, … [Read more...]