q Often there isn't enough good stuff to supply a whole year. If you're doing any holiday shopping or gift-giving in the next few weeks, particularly for ...

It's a time of year when even the less pie-inclined among us often sit down to enjoy a slice or two. And that is the thing I am most thankful for. Pie at ...

Both for my own enjoyment and to block out the sound of neighbors around me, I have headphones for my television set. I live alone, so I know this might ...

q In this case, I'm talking about food. If you're a human being, which you probably are, then you need to eat, which you probably have at least a few times ...

q Thank goodness I had a blazer to throw on over it. For polish, it's hard to top a blazer. They're sleek, they add definition, and they often project an ...

On Sunday, our clocks will fall back by an hour, in the more palatable of the two shifts we make for Daylight Saving Time. Fortunately for all of our brains, ...

Let's talk about rice. No, not wild rice, or basmati rice, or brown rice versus white. The rice I want to discuss with you transcends these conversations. ...

It's sweater weather. OK, in Fremont County I understand it's been more like winter coat weather. That's a shame so early in the season, but it also means ...

This is a story about how I learned to stop worrying and hate the rain. In Wyoming, I think it's safe to say that we like it when it rains. For one thing, ...

Birds of all kinds are in shocking decline, and it's at its worst here in Wyoming. But there's a lot we can do to get back to a time when things were ...

Part of my return to teaching each fall is a wardrobe wrangling. And part of a wardrobe wrangling is deciding which sort of persona I want to affect for the ...

I try to begin each new year of teaching confidently. This year is my fifth as a college instructor, and my second as full faculty at the University of ...

I grew up in Wyoming, where corn is a significant crop, but I now live in a state known for its corn. Iowa has corn museums and corn mazes (or maises?) in ...

A question for your consideration: Which sort of business has the greatest variety of names, where the name is composed of a location or type of physical ...

The Midwest ends, and the West -- Wyoming country, the highest plains, mountains and dry air and sagebrush oceans -- begins at mile marker 120 on Interstate 80 ...

Hear me, dear reader, as I lay before you a piteous and preposterous presumption that so many of us hold. I write of the the dastardly lie of a tale we tell ...

On this flag-waving weekend, I ask: What is the USA's signature food? There isn't a lot of debate here. It's apple pie. Maybe some will argue for the hot ...

I resolved this week that I would walk 15 kilometers every day (for the pedometerists among us, that's roughly 17,000 steps). It's lovely here in suburban ...

I really like birds. If you read my column regularly, you know this. As a bird guy, I try to feed birds on the porch of my apartment. This, however, has ...

Again and again I've heard the phrase "you don't want to know how the sausage is made" or some variation of that. It has a metaphorical meaning, of course: ...

I've spent parts of the last few days defending baseball to various people who accost me for liking it. Well, not accost, necessarily. Admittedly I'm the one ...

I was on the way to my first academic conference as a professor, and I'd forgotten my shoes. There was no way around it. We were already cruising in the ...

Part 1 It was the eve of my first big academic conference as a university faculty member, and I was packing. I'd travel from Iowa City to Pittsburgh, ...

When I was a little kid, I would rig rooms in tape and string, running them across the space wall to wall, imagining a complex machine or elaborate fort. The ...

I have lived almost all my life either in tiny student housing or with family members who knew more about maintaining homes than I did. And now in my first ...

I put seed out on my porch because I want to attract the good birds. No offense, sparrows and wrens. You're rare sometimes. and you can sing, and your flocks ...

One of the best games to play driving at night on the highway is to try and identify vehicles by their headlights. We all do this, I think, whether conscious ...