Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

I survived last Friday the 13th. I’m not superstitious, but as a man of 71, I’ve learned to respect the odds—especially since the next “day of misfortune” arrives next month. To celebrate the date and, more importantly, my son-in-law Matt’s 50th birthday, we met at Tequi Town in the bustling metropolis of Esko. Tequi Town is part of a four-restaurant chain in Minnesota called Tequila Town. Their Esko location sits across from the high school, which led to a bit of local drama last year. The Town of Thomson Board of Supervisors, wielding its authority over liquor licenses, stipulated that the exterior signage could not refer to an “intoxicating beverage” because of its proximity to the students. In a 3-2 decision, the “poobahs” of Thomson required the word “Tequila” be scrubbed from the building. Apparently, they believe seeing a word on a wall is a greater threat to youth than the beer and wine ads they see ad nauseam during every sporting event. But I digress. Finding decent Mexican f...

The rich and powerful write the rules but often fail to follow them, highlighting a core problem: those shaping our society are rarely held to the same standards as everyone else.  As the scandalous Epstein documents came out recently, I was wondering if the people whose names are behind the black boxes feel any shame. Do they regret “partying” with the world’s most despicable money-laundering sexual predator? One of the released documents is a draft email Epstein wrote, in which he made several explosive, unverified claims. One claim alleged that Bill Gates of Microsoft riches got a sexually transmitted infection (STI) after encounters with Epstein’s "Russian girls." Gates denied the allegations, calling them "absurd and completely false." He suggested Epstein was attempting to defame or extort him after their relationship soured.  In a recent interview with NPR, Melinda French Gates, his ex-wife, noted that Gates’s association with Epstein was a significant factor...

A friend recently recommended John Steinbeck’s "The Moon is Down," a short novel with a powerful parable about the resilience of the human spirit under military (or ICE) occupation. Written to support the Allied war effort during World War II, the story is set in a small, unnamed coastal mining town in Northern Europe, likely Norway. The town is suddenly invaded and occupied by an unnamed military force from a warring country led by a dictator. The story emphasizes that "free people" cannot be permanently broken because their leadership is always decentralized. If one leader is killed, another emerges — the power of democracy. One of the book's most famous lines describes the occupiers' plight: "The flies have conquered the flypaper." This suggests that while the invaders have "caught" the town, they are now stuck and slowly being destroyed by the very people they intended to control. Sounds familiar to an aged Minnesota man.  Steinbeck h...

As temperatures plunged the last few weeks, the snow didn’t stop. It just came in frequent, relatively small amounts, blown around by gusty winds. Due to my advanced years and easily frozen fingers, the only snow I moved during the lengthy cold snap was off the porch and around the car. Our driveway, better described as “park” way, is a couple of feet longer than our car and as wide as two cars side by side. While these inch-or-two snowfalls happened almost daily, I would sweep snow off the car and push it into a fast-growing snowbank where the second car, if we had one, would go. I left that growing snowbank until now, at the end of the month, when I shoveled it all. Temps were slightly above zero.  While shoveling, my thoughts went from avoiding my demise from a cardiac disaster to contemplating the birthdays of our direct descendants. There was a reason for those thoughts that went beyond the fact they’d get zippy-doo-dah from my “estate,” if my old ticker were to give up the gh...