Lake Minnetonka Opinion

The No. 1-ranked U.S. women’s national team is in France as you read this, crashing through every other World Cup team in their path. Through the first three games they have scored an almost absurd 18 points while allowing their opponents nil.

Guns are not something I grew up around, nor something I’ve had good experiences with.

What I want to talk about is somewhat controversial, in that it stirs up strong feelings in people. Some feel judged, some are frightened by the similarities they might be reading about, some will welcome the idea and support the change. 

School is officially over for the year and while I am thrilled and proud of the 2019 graduates that I know, I am still waiting for the awards and the scholarships that are based on being a good human. The other awards and recognitions are important and all, but I wonder what the world would …

The kids are doing the countdown to summer! I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that 2019 is almost half over. I’m not sure how that happened so fast. We are already looking ahead and planning things for December.

Many years ago, Robert Fulghum wrote the widely acclaimed book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”; he recounted life’s lessons such as play fair, don’t hit people, put things back where you found them, and don’t take things that aren’t yours, etc. Research moves that cloc…

When I was a little boy, growing up in the 1950s, I was in awe of our World War II veterans. Everyone's dad had served during the war. If you asked them a direct question about what they'd done, they told you. Mostly, they didn't really talk about it. My generation — the baby boomers — recei…

With the warmer weather this past month, we were able to continue our effort to improve the water quality and ecological integrity of Wassermann Lake in Victoria. In a partnership with the city of Victoria, the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD) treated a pond on the west side of Wass…

May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month. Minnesota and Wisconsin are known hot beds for Lyme disease, otherwise known as the great imitator. It mimics other diseases, which is what can complicate getting proper treatment and the correct diagnoses. Add to that, the knowledge that current tests fo…

Recently I learned of the Minnetonka High School students who are raising awareness for Mental Health through a student-run organization called MHS Wellness. Since May is Mental Health Month, they have been very active. Among other things, last week they painted the rock in front of the scho…

Mother’s Day is coming up. It’s a day where we celebrate and show our appreciation of the women in our lives who we call mom. When my mother died seven years ago, on Mother’s Day I scattered her ashes in the ocean off of the island I grew up on, on a beach she loved dearly. In Hawaii, we cal…

South of my boyhood home, across the gravel road and behind the mailbox was a manmade drainage “ditch” — very deep and wide. This waterway drained 19,000 acres of swamp land from Geneva Lake to Austin, Minnesota.

What are labels? In terms of people, they are what we use to identify someone, so as to give them context in our world. I’m not talking about names. I’m talking about how we identify ourselves or how others identify us. I’m a mother, stepmother, grandmother, friend, sister, neighbor, etc. I’…

My daughter’s class is graduating from high school this year. My daughter, however, is not. Three years ago, when she was 15, she took her own life.

Every spring, my father (a farmer) would say, time to breakup the ground. He meant loosen up the hard-packed soil, enabling the growth of seeds. Much significant human growth also occurs after break-up points.

The lakes always keep coming up with new restaurants. And the new restaurants just brought in chefs from New York or some such place. The new chefs dream up recipes for filet mignon sliders perched upon gluten-free garlic roasted bagels, or master chef Adolphus, originally from New Orleans, …

I first came to the Twin Cities 40 years ago when the area was all about grain, its production, milling and distribution. Minneapolis was the largest cash grain market in the world, the Grain Exchange Building was full of grain companies and the trading floor was packed with madly waving, fr…

I have a friend, Geoffrey Kingscott, who lives in Nottingham, England, who speaks and writes immaculate English. When I hear him speak, I want to burn my tongue.

Every baby is a copycat — genetically and behaviorally. These two facts speak volumes about parenting at its outset, as well as the whole of life; it works on probability theory — what goes “in” impacts what turns “out.”

We shared the elevator from the parking ramp to Target Center with a doting grandmother. She was taking her 10-year-old grandson to his first basketball game.

I think we have become a nation of wimps.

Talk about cultural isolation. Living in Orono 14 miles from downtown Minneapolis I didn’t know what Uber was until a friend of mine from New York came to visit. He wanted to call Uber and see if they could take him to the airport. As he called I asked him, “What is Uber?” At that time there…

“Others before self” was a seed sown early in my life. My little sister, Dorothy, liked to stand on the back of my tricycle, which led to my objections; her weight slowed my speed on the rough farmyard gravel. Mom usually took her side — reminding me that siblings take care of one another.

Let us imagine a race of man who have always lived beneath the earth in fair and noble dwellings, beautified with paintings and statues and furnished with everything requisite to wealth and the blessings that wealth can bring. Let us imagine that these men have never come up to the surface o…

I fell in love with water as a little refugee boy fleeing communism on the SS Mercy sailing from Bremerhaven, Germany, to Boston in 1952. Yep, I am one of the few people in this area who actually came over on a boat. I still remember the deep, salty smell of the Atlantic Ocean and the bellow…

Our house is filled with “things” we like — most older, a few newer, some hidden, some in plain view, a few homemade and others inherited. It is our “stuff.” We have made a kind of accommodation to it!

I have a few thoughts on sports I just need to get off my chest this week:

Since the beginning of written history, humans have sought to discover the Fountain of Youth. For you fountain-challenged, the fountain supposedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower spoke in Albert Lea from the rear of his campaign train in 1952. My high school classmates and I were excused — and thrilled to see and hear him speak. Later, he was elected!

There are many huge natural migrations on earth: Canada geese flying south, swallows of San Juan Capistrano heading off to Argentina from California and humpback whales leaving cold Alaskan waters to go off to the warm currents of Hawaii.

This story — with variations — occurs throughout outstate Minnesota. Many of us know it well, but not my children and grandchildren, who have lived their whole life in the Twin Cities.

Let’s check out the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission status webpage for Voyager 1 and 2. It’ll be fun.

Buy low, sell high. The best sale is a good purchase. High prices cure high prices; low prices cure low prices. If you watch the pennies, the dollars will take care of themselves.

Years ago someone developed the term A-listers to denote celebrities who were at the top of the totem pole in Hollywood.

When and where many of us grew up, years ago, differs widely today. But necessary and desirable learning outcomes for this generation of youth change not so much.