Cass Lake, MN.

Friday night after work. A long, long week in the court system trying to use only a computer (no paper files) to do my job. Arraignment week, five days of constant sitting and dealing with criminal defendants, has left my neck and back in knots. Physically, arraignment week is akin to an endurance sport. Add trying to learn our court system’s computer program’s digital imaging protocols (we’re moving to a paperless eCourt model) to the mix and you’ve got the makings of a melt down. But I made it through in one piece, an old dog learning new tricks, and, my blue Pacifica loaded with copies of my Finnish tomes, Suomalaiset and Sukulaiset, a change of clothes, and a ton of optimism, I head north on US Highway 2 on a mini book tour of Itasca and Hubbard Counties.

Village Books in Grand Rapids, MN.

I settle into my chair in the mezzanine of the mall in Grand Rapids, my table and chair set up in front of Village Books. I’ve done nearly a dozen book signings at Village, soon to be the last independent bookstore on the Iron Range (though Piragis, the outfitting store in Ely still has books for sale, it has always been,and remains primarily a clothing and outdoor equipment store) since becoming a published author. Mike, the owner, and now Meade, his daughter, are always welcoming to regional authors. Tonight is no exception. The young clerk in charge welcomes me, buys me the traditional writerly cup of coffee, and I go to work. There are folks milling about;  most of them patrons of the Chinese buffet across the way or teenagers attending the Magic tournament down the hall. My friends, Randy and Kathy McCarty show up. They’re a couple who has, on occasion, opened up their lovely home on Lake Pokegema for this itinerant author to spend the night. I’m not staying with them on this trip as Kathy has girlfriends in for the weekend. Randy buys a copy of Esther’s Race, a book he’s already read but lost somewhere along the way. We make plans for dinner and my friends and Kathy’s girlfriends depart.

The Reader.

I return to reading an article by Jim HIghtower critiquing the labor and business practices of Amazon.com. I do a lot of business with the online octopus. Out of necessity and a sense of survival, my books are for sale there in print and Kindle formats. And, because of the costs of printing, shipping, and procurement in the book business are so high, my backlist (older) titles are now printed by Amazon’s digital printing service, Create Space (CS). It’s not a decision I entered into lightly, feeding the beast, the online predator that has gobbled up hundreds of independent bookstores and an entire bookstore chain (Border’s) over the past decade. But a writer wants his or her words to be available and frankly, in the current marketplace of ideas, it makes, as my accountant friend Burce would say, “business sense” to print through CS. As I read Hightower’s words and a companion piece by The Reader, where local business owners are interviewed about the impact of Amazon on main street America, I find my stomach churning and my resolve fading.

Maybe I shouldn’t be feeding the beast.

I say goodnight to the young lady manning the store and wander off to dinner. I have a lively time conversing with the McCarty’s and their friends. The ladies buy me dinner because, as one of them says, “you’re entertaining”. I leave Randy the Amazon piece because I know he and Kathy (who works for Village Books) are interested in the travails of the book publishing world.

“You shouldn’t use Expedia,” the clerk at the hotel says as I switch my $94 room, the one I lined up on Expedia, a room which turned out to be a smoking room (didn’t know they existed in mostly smoke-free Minnesota) for a $134 non-smoking suite. “They don’t always tell you whether a room is smoking or not. Better to book directly with us.”

I nod and head towards sleep, chastised for the second time that evening for using an online merchant to bypass main street America.

Eagle’s nest, Itasca County.

The photo isn’t as clear as I’d like  but if you look closely at the picture, you can see the eagle’s nest that caused me to stop on Highway 2 just outside of Cass Lake. My blue Pacifica purrs and gurgles while pulp trucks, campers, and Harleys roar past. I stare at the empty nest and consider why I am alone, on a beautiful Saturday morning, headed to Park Rapids. The photos taken, my lament cured, I put the old van in drive and head to the next bookstore.

Jen, the young lady in charge of Beagle’s Books and Bindery, and her mother, Sally, greet me as I walk into the cheerful store crammed to the ceiling with new and used books.

“You’re a bit early,” Sally says. “I was just going to clear a table and get you set up.

I decide to take a walk. It’s nearly eighty degrees outside and the sky is full to the brim with sun. I follow a sidewalk. Downtown Park Rapids is alive. Cars are crammed into every parking space due to a variety of events. The commercial section of the county seat of Hubbard County is dominated by the spire of a restored movie theater anchoring a host of vibrant, locally owned shops and restaurants. I see a woman struggling with a box loaded with T shirts and hoodies trying to open the door to the town’s armory. I step in and hold the door for her.

“Mark, what are you doing here?”

The struggling young woman is Heidi Holtan, program manager of KAXE radio in Grand Rapids and former host of “Real Good Words”, a radio show that once featured interviews with writers known and unknown. Randy McCarty told me that Heidi was in Park Rapids to host the Great Northern Radio Show, a locally produced effort that mimics a Prairie Home Companion. I explain I’m in town signing books. Heidi invites me in to meet Aaron Brown, another Minnesota author (Overburden) who I’ve exchanged emails with but never met. Turns out Aaron, who is co-hosting the event with Heidi, went to college with my oldest son Matt. Small world. The pair invite me to stay for the show but as much as I’d love to stay, I explain my wife is waiting patiently for me back in Duluth.

Beagle’s Bookstore in Park Rapids, MN.

Settled in behind a table stacked with copies of Sukulaiset, Jen and I discuss the Hightower article. I sense she isn’t too happy to hear that the author she is hosting is using CS to print his older titles.

Bad form to promote such thinking while a guest at an independent bookstore.

In the end we reach a place of mutual understanding if not consensus. I sell some books to Hubbard County residents and leave signed copies of Sukulaiset for Beagle’s shelves.

The ride home across a country filled with lakes large and small, and across the Father of Waters, is uneventful. I arrive home, empty the van of my duffle and my books and walk into the house to give me wife a well deserved kiss.

The Mississippi at Jacobson, MN.

Peace.

Mark

Fresh off the presses, the latest issue of the New World Finn newspaper has a review of my latest book, Sukulaiset: The Kindred, written by Finnish American, historian, and former director of the Seaway Port Authority, Davis Helberg. You can find the complete review in the October/November issue at p. 11. But here’s a sampling of what Davis thought of the book:

As he did in Suomalaiset, Munger not only provides illuminating historical background, he also brings us into the minds and hearts of the central characters. And that cast of characters is compelling, to say the least…(W)e also get page turning tension as the book’s protagonists endure incredible hardship or tangle with inner demons or fall in (or out of) love or discover their own surprising strengths and weaknesses…Munger, who is not of Finnish ancestry, does a masterful job of capturing the essence of the Finnish character. It is also quite clear that he invested prodigious research into Finnish and Estonian history…

A preeminent contemporary writer, E.L. Doctorow, might just as well have been describing Munger’s latest book when he said, “The historian can tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

That’s what I was aiming to do, folks, try to tell you what the turmoil and tension of Karelian Fever and the horrific nightmare of WW II felt like to ordinary Finns and Estonians. At least one person thinks I succeeded.

Peace.

Mark

Rene’s garden, 09/07/2014.

OK. The title to this blog is a bit of a misnomer. When one thinks of endless summer visions of June’s greening, July’s shimmering, and August’s oppressive sweltering come to mind. Well, that’s not quite what this summer has been up here in the Northland. We had an intolerably wet spring and early summer, the June rains and lack of light making our vegetable garden a whisper of what it could have or should have been. And July and August? Hardly ideal for growing edible things. Our carrots, potatoes, onions, raspberries, Russian berries, green beans and now, the sweet corn have done tolerably well. But the cucumbers, squash and pumpkins? Puny to non-existent. But for some reason, the late start to the growing season and the continued moderation of summer here along the banks of the Cloquet River has been a boon, an absolute godsend, to my wife’s flower gardens.

More of Rene’s flowers.

Beyond wheeling away an occasional load of debris from my wife’s constant weeding and tinkering in her flowery realms, I don’t contribute much in the way of labor to her efforts to beautify our place. Early on I helped a bit by moving rocks and topsoil. And whenever Rene’ hauls pea rock or landscaping materials home in her car, I help her unload. But to say that I’ve assisted Rene’ with the flower gardens would be to stretch the truth: the gardens and their ponds are my wife’s love and her creation. I’ve been mostly a bystander and naysayer bemoaning the fact that Rene’s gardens grow larger over time.

“I thought you were going to downsize” is a phrase I’ve muttered more than once as my wife sat on her plastic garden stool, pulling offending weeds, piling vegetative debris on my cleanly mown lawn.

Two summers ago, I contributed some actual labor to my wife’s beautification effort. When we moved into the new house, there were no shrubs or bushes of any kind surrounding our place at the top of a small rise located smack dab in the middle of a hay field. Rene’ went to work adding the flower gardens, her ponds, various shade trees, and an extensive rose garden. Over the years, the roses grew out of control until they became an ugly, angry mass of stalks and thorns. At my wife’s behest, I spent the better part of a weekend dismantling the landscape stones surrounding the rose garden so a local contractor could come in with a bobcat and dig out the offending plants. Then, again at my wife’s urging, I helped revise the plot into a line of shrubs surrounded by the same landscape stones. But beyond this singular effort, I haven’t had much to do with the flower gardens that surround our home with color during the height of summer.

Last July, a Japanese lilac gracing our front yard attracted hundreds of swallowtails to its flowers. The branches of the tall bush were crowded with fluttering yellow butterflies bent on sucking nectar

Endless summer color.

from the plant’s blossoms. But, despite this year’s endless summer, the plethora of swallowtails didn’t return this year. Oh, I spotted the occasional stray yellow butterfly flying around the place

but the great invasion of 2013 was not repeated. Also noticeably absent have been our bluebirds. For the past fifteen years, two pair of these colorful members of the thrush family have called wooden bird houses affixed to fence posts surrounding our vegetable garden their home. The birds were here, along with tree swallows (who also help themselves to our bird houses) in May. But the weather did them in. When I rebuilt the fence surrounding the vegetable garden earlier this summer, I found a clutch of abandoned bluebird eggs inside one of the birdhouses. I haven’t seen a bluebird or a swallow around the place since June. I’m unsure if the presence of flowers in Rene’s gardens into September makes up for the loss of the birds.

Blue flowers, not bluebirds.

It’s 5:00am on a Wednesday. I’m sitting at the family computer, staring at early morning’s inky blackness, listening to rain patter against the steel siding of our house, as I type this piece. Every so often the wind-driven rain thrashes the windows of my writing space. There’s an end-of-the-summer sound to the storm. Maybe it’s just my imagination but it feels as if Rene’s flowers are about to fade.

Peace.

Mark

Rene’ biking the Munger Trail.

Another summer shot to hell. Another season of lament.

Sounds like the opening line to a depressing folk song. What put me in such a black mood? Well, it’s the fact that I’ve failed to keep my summertime agenda. So far, I haven’t plopped a canoe into the black water of the Cloquet River. Not a once. I’ve fished the local lakes by boat and motor one time. One time. I’ve taken a boat out sightseeing twice. Once on Island Lake, once on Fish.Three trips on the water over the entire summer. Pathetic.

Where the hell did the time go?

It’s Sunday morning. I’m sitting playing hooky from church on a windy end-of-summer-day (the weather forecast calls for a 65% chance of a thunderstorm by tonight and a wet morning to put a damper on Labor Day). I’m thinking about what I could have accomplished this summer.

A canoe trip to the BWCA.

A better, more vibrant vegetable garden (should have dumped in manure like Rene’ suggested).

A long road trip to Yosemite (never been) or Yellowstone (haven’t been since I was 6 years old) or some other such place.

Construction projects that need doing around the house.

Trail clearing and cutting.

More bike rides, more walks in the woods, more quality time with Jack and Rene’.

The list goes on and on and on as Dylan’s Planet Waves plays softly over the computer behind these words.

That’s another thing undone, uncompleted. I was going to transfer more of my vinyl, including the new Trampled By Turtles (bought vinyl as an ambitious bow to the past), into digital. Got three or four albums done and then the effort petered out.

The great writer Tony Hillerman (he passed away in 2008) penned a memoir entitled Seldom Disappointed. I’ve often thought that, when and if I write a memoir, the working title should be Always Disappointed. But that title is such utter bullshit, my wife, kids, friends, and other family would slap me upside the head if I ever deigned to pen such a piece of selfish crap. I know I’m a blessed man. I’ve lived a wonderful, wonderful life. I know this when I see my grandson, A.J., and he lights up as he shrieks “Grandpa.” I know this whenever my four sons are together and I can appreciate what fine young men they’ve become. I know this even before my beautiful and pragmatic wife says, “lighten up.” So enough with the dirge already. Seasons come and seasons go. I’ll never be able, no matter how I try, to manipulate every thought in my head into action. Things will be left undone. Trips will be left untaken. Stories will be left untold. But the life I’m living is damned blessed. This I know.

Sandhills on the field getting ready for their migration.

If you look really, really close at the photo to the left, you’ll see two cranes strutting across our pasture. The sandhills know that change is coming. They can feel it in the early morning dew and the late evening air. They can hear it in the chatter of drying leaves. They can sense it in the shifting wind. I wonder: Have these graceful birds left any tasks for tomorrow? Have they missed out on any amusement they were looking forward to? I doubt it.

Blueberry breakfast.

I should be more optimistic. For the first time since we’ve had blueberry bushes in our garden, I actually picked more than a handful to eat. It’s true birds found the ripe berries before I did. Still, there were enough berries left behind for me to have a week’s worth of cereal and fresh blueberries. That treat alone should have been enough to declare summer a success. But remember the title of my faux memoir. I am not a man easily satisfied. Give me a quart of fresh berries, I’ll ask, “Why can’t I have a gallon?” Wrong, you say? No question. A controllable personality quirk? I’m working on it.

Other pluses for the garden have been the Russian berries, the red raspberries, the green beans, the onions, the carrots, the potatoes, and the tomatoes. The photo to the left shows the first of the tomatoes Rene’ will conjure into her famous spaghetti sauce and salsa. There will be more. Not as many as last year. But enough. And that’s a definite plus. A positive.

Yesterday’s tomatoes.

Thinking my pre-autumnal malaise through, I believe there’s an age component to my steely resistance to appreciating what’s right in front of my eyes. Very soon, I’ll be entering my seventh decade of life. I don’t want to cross over that threshold with trepidation or alarm or regret. I want my next decade of life to be exciting and educational and full of family and friends and new adventures and experiences. To get there, I need to figure out a better way to curb my inclination to expect perfection from others, from the world, from the seasons of the year, but mostly from myself. Maybe the spur-of-the-moment trip Rene’ and I took yesterday is the beginning of my attempt to break free of an unsustainable pattern.

On a whim, we jumped in the car and motored off to St. Paul to take in the Minnesota State Fair. Usually, I plan such excursions months in advance. Yesterday, we simply woke up, took our showers, got dressed, and headed out. Sort of a prelude, a practice session to being empty-nesters. That’s a transition that’s some years away, what with Jack still in high school. But it’s coming. And maybe, just maybe, what we did yesterday, what I did yesterday, is a sample of how things might be if only I let go a bit.

Rene’ at the fair.

Parking was a bitch because we arrived in St. Paul after 1:00pm on the busiest day at the fair. There were a few tense moments, a few untoward comments between us, until I found a place on a side street and parked my wife’s Rogue.

“I’ll walk back after we’re done and get the car. You can wait by the entrance. I’ll pick you up.”

My wife (who suffered a horrific ankle fracture a few years’ back) isn’t up for walking long distances on pavement. Just ambling around the fair for a few hours would tax the metal-and screw-reinforced joint.  I didn’t think of it at the time but my not insisting on Rene’s limping back to the car was a bow, a recognition, that things don’t always have to be done according to the Gospel of Mark. Adaptability: That’s what I need to somehow acquire in my toolbox of attributes. Maybe I took a step towards that goal yesterday.

Chair lift at the fair.

With our late arrival to the fair, we missed seeing our sons (Matt, Chris, and Jack), our daughter-in-law Lisa, Lisa’s mother Judy, Chris’s significant other, Rachel, and our beloved grandson, AJ. We also missed completing my annual checklist of booths and exhibits that are “Mark must sees”: the DNR display, the livestock barns, and Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion live broadcast from the grandstand. We did manage visits to some of our usual suspects: the tractor vendors, the screenhouse builders, the pole building contractors, the travel trailer lots, and the boat and motor outlets. But these were minor distractions. The locations we failed to visit are at the very essence of why I love the fair. And yet, substituting the quilting exhibit, the art exhibit, and the 4H building for the main attractions was more than satisfying. I could have stayed in the art building, studying the talents of Minnesotans working in pen, pencil, clay, metal, paint, and wood for days.

It was pitch dark when we pulled into the Adolph General Store in Hermantown. I listened to Springsteen’s The Rising while Rene’ went into the store to buy fresh pork chops, burger, and a roast. It’s true that the album has moments of regret and angst. But in the end, The Boss included lyrics of hope and redemption in the composition. Sitting in the car, in the dark, the title song drifting over me, I had this thought:

Maybe there’s hope for an old man to learn a new way of appreciating the world and the folks who grace it.

Peace.

Mark

I read with interest the three part series profiling former Hibbing tennis star, California prosecutor, and renowned author, Vincent Bugliosi, that recently appeared in the Duluth News Tribune. My first reaction to the series was Wow, journalism is once again alive and well in NE Minnesota! My second reaction was Maybe I can add a little something to the story.

Understand: I am not a personal friend of Mr. Bugliosi’s. I have only met the man once, back in the mid-1990s, when he appeared as a guest speaker at a lawyers’ gathering I was attending. Prior to giving his speech, he’d taken up the gauntlet to litigate the case against Lee Harvey Oswald (as the alleged lone gunman who assassinated President Kennedy). In a mock trial tried before an actual jury, Vincent functioned as the prosecutor and noted criminal defense attorney, Gerry Spence, defended Oswald. Mr. Bugliosi related during his talk that, in addition to participating in the trial (which ended in a conviction of Oswald and resulted in a British television documentary) he was heavily involved in combing the Warren Report and other historical evidence with an eye towards writing the definitive book decrying the conspiracy theories behind the President’s murder. I was enthralled by his dedication to task and research. As a fiction writer, I wanted to meet the man.

At the time, Vincent was hawking his latest book, And the Sea Will Tell, a true crime story that chronicled his defense of an alleged accomplice to the brutal murder of a wealthy couple by an envious drifter (the guy wanted a new yacht and saw homicide as the best means to acquire it) on the remote Pacific island of Palmyra. After Mr. Bugliosi concluded his remarks, I walked up, bought a signed copy of the book, and chatted, ever-so-briefly with the author about my writerly aspirations. The man couldn’t have been more gracious, more encouraging, more kind. Having become a published author (albeit in the minor leagues) since that encounter, I’ve had many folks approach me to talk about writing and publishing. I’ve learned that it’s not an easy task to ground would-be authors in reality, but, at the same time, encourage their aspirations. Vincent accomplished this dual task during our brief interaction: He emboldened me to keep fingers to keyboard. And so I did.

When my first novel, The Legacy, was ready to be published by Savage Press, Mike Savage asked if there were any folks of note who might review my book and supply complimentary cover blurbs. I thought of Senator Paul Wellstone, former Vice President Walter Mondale, Boston author Barry Reed (author of the great legal novel, The Verdict, who I’d also met at a lawyers’ function), MPR commentator Mary VanEvera, and Vincent Bugliosi. I sent review copies of the novel to all five requesting that they read the book and supply blurbs if they thought the effort worthy. I received prompt, favorable responses from the first four individuals but I didn’t hear back from Mr. Bugliosi.

He hated the book.

That’s how authors, even established authors, think. There’s always a seed of doubt lingering behind a writer’s effort. I was convinced that, despite recounting our brief connection at his speech in my cover letter, Vincent was either too busy to read The Legacy, or, like so many literary agents, read the first paragraph and tossed the book in the slush pile for recycling. Then, just before the book to be printed, a delicately scripted envelope from California found its way into my rural mailbox.

As a native of northern Minnesota, I was intrigued by Judge Munger’s captivating depiction of the links between the present and the past. Part historical novel, part contemporary thriller, The Legacy is a very impressive first novel, which readers of this genre will enjoy immensely. Vincent Bugliosi.

Unlike the other folks I’d contacted (who sent blurbs typewritten and vetted by personal assistants) Vincent’s response was written in ink and elegant cursive, the sort of reply you’d expect to receive from a luminary from a long-past era. The man who successfully prosecuted Charles Manson, one of the most famous attorneys of 20^th century America, hadn’t written me off: He was just being deliberate and thoughtful before responding to my brazen request.

I’ll cherish that handwritten letter and accolade from Vincent Bugliosi no matter the course my fiction writing takes.

Peace.

Mark

(This piece, edited by Chuck Frederick, originally appeared in the Duluth News Tribune)

The blue Pacifica, Leech Lake, MN

Saturday. 5:00am comes early after a long and difficult week behind the bench. As I get older, I find that my stamina, my ability to process the multitude of cases that come before me during criminal arraignment week is affected by age and fatigue. Hearing hundreds of cases over the course of arraignment week leaves my low back stiff, my neck sore. Hot baths seem to have lost their healing powers. It’s with reluctance and trepidation that I move from the cozy confines of the bed I share with my wife of 36 years into the bathroom to shower. Miraculously, the hot water rejuvenates me. After dressing in the stillness of early morning, dawn’s light obscured by fog and thick pewter clouds outside, I load books into my trusty Chrysler and head down the road. My destination is Hackensack, Minnesota where the 19th annual Northwoods Art and Book Festival is being held. It’s a two-plus hour drive so I haul ass through more fog, mist, and gray.

I fill up my van’s fuel tank and my tummy at the Pike Lake Holiday station. I also fill my travel mug with coffee. I need caffeine to keep my eyes open and my wits about me as I drive west on US 2. The sky threatens rain but, other than occasional mist and a few drops, the land remains relatively dry.  I arrive in Hackensack by 8:15. I stop by the festival’s registration table, pick up my packet, park the Pacifica, and commence unloading boxes and bins.

Most years I turn in my application form on time, which means my table space is in the UCC church with dozens of other authors. But this year I was late sending in my registration. So I find myself selling next to J.B. Hove (an author I recently met at Finn Fest) in the community center surrounded by jewelry makers, artists, and crafters. I say my hellos to the Hoves while setting up my display. Once the rented table is filled with Munger books, I park the van and wander over to the church to say hello to writers I know.

I love doing this event. Year after year, customers who’ve bought books from me want other titles. Towards noon, a lady stops by, picks up Sukulaiset: The Kindred (a book not even in bookstores because it’s so new) and says words any author would cherish:

“I just love the way you write. I have a stack of books to read but, whenever I find a new one of yours, the others can wait. I love that you try new genres, plot new and different stories, and introduce me to things I hadn’t thought of. You’re a gifted writer.”

Now, this woman’s not affiliated with an agent. Her acclaim will do nothing to advance publicity for my work. And yet, her statement, unsolicited and spontaneous, is like balm on a burn patient’s wounds. I smile, thank her for buying my latest novel, sign a copy of the book, place it in a biodegradable bag, and shake her hand. “Keep writing,” the woman adds as she walks away, the bag and book tucked under an arm.

Sales are brisk. Despite standing on bare concrete for most of the day (occasionally sitting on a metal folding chair, reading Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose’s mammoth book about Merriweather Lewis) I make it through the day none the worse for the wear.

Maybe its the good vibes and well wishes of my customers that acts as tonic for my ills.

I call my wife a few times during lulls in the action to find out what’s happening back home. I’m told my grandson AJ and his parents, my eldest son Matt and his wife Lisa, are coming for dinner. I offer to pick up ice cream for dessert. My wife doesn’t object. By 3:00pm, the end of the festival, I’m satisfied and happy. I’ve sold books, received encouragement from readers, and renewed my friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Hove. I pile cartons and bins into the Pacifica and by 3:15, I’m on the road. The sky remains ominous. The air holds water like a saturated sponge but the clouds never open up. I stop at Leech Lake just to study the slate colored water.

I really need to fish this lake.

I pull up to the house a few minutes before six, mint chocolate chip ice cream in tow. When I open the door and plop cartons of unsold books on the landing, AJ greets me with a yelp and a smile. I pick up my grandson, give him a big hug and a kiss, and greet my wife and Matt and Lisa.

“You got a pretty good review in the Budgeteer,” Matt says.

“Rene’, why didn’t you tell me there was a review in today’s paper? I’ve been waiting for someone to give me feedback on the new book.”

My wife continues her work in the kitchen.

“I didn’t know there was a review in the paper,” she says matter-of-factually.

I wander over to the couch, find the paper, and locate the review.

Budgeteer News (8/24/14)

“Matt, this review is better than pretty good…”

Indeed. The headline is more than enough to soothe my authorial fears.

Ms. Maloney’s commentary is the perfect end to a very good day in the life of a regional writer.

Peace.

Mark

Leech Lake, MN