A new fishing season is under way. Now is a good time to remember what fishing techniques have worked in the past, but we should also remind ourselves to revise those techniques when the fish aren’t responding to them. Here’s what I mean. Trolling with crankbaits has become a popular ...
The United States Postal Service and I go back a longways. My first memories of U.S. Mail are from 1951. I was three-years-old and we lived on a farm on the south side of the gravel road that was the Iowa-Minnesota state line. Though we lived in Iowa our mailing address was Frost, Minnesota, which was the closest post office with rural delivery. At age three I did no mailing, of course, but I remember family talk about the unusual situation. By 1952 we were living on a farm in central Iowa and my mother occasionally assigned me, by now a four-year-old, to go to our rural mailbox to ...
Several years ago a list of jokes about “dumb men” made the rounds via e-mail. This was before Facebook became a joke-sharing medium. As I recall, most men laughed at the “dumb men” jokes, just as many blondes did when the “dumb blond” jokes made the rounds. Having worked with many women over the years, I’ve heard countless complaints and jokes about men. The theme is generally the same: “Men are all alike — stupid.” There is strong evidence to support that opinion, but I have my own theory with much more evidence to support it. I believe that men are not dumb, ...
You may call me frugal, if you wish. You may even call me thrifty. Just don’t call me a cheapskate. Growing up in a large low-income can teach money management skills difficult to learn under other circumstances. My childhood circumstances led me to a life of frugality. My mother could have won a trophy for her ability to stretch a dollar and her kids learned by observation and participation. When you’re shopping with just a few coins in your pocket you quickly learn which bubble-gum is the best value. I applied these principals to business management and some of my employees ...
Resiliency has been a buzz word over the last few years in relation to trauma. How to build resiliency in ourselves and in our children, however, is not discussed as much as the effects of what happens to people who are not as resilient as others. It is inevitable that a person will have to deal with some tough times in their lives. How they cope and manage through those times and how quickly they are able to continue on with their lives is dependent on how resilient they prove to be. Bouncing back Resiliency is the ability to bounce back from life’s inevitable ...
The early part of the fishing season is a great time to be on the water: It just feels good, and the fishing can be good also. Knowing a little bit about how fish go about their reproductive ritual can help us catch even more fish. Most of the fish that live in Midwest waters spawn in the ...
