The first (and second) rules of Chuck Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” are the same: “You do NOT talk about Fight Club.”
Twenty hours before his death, Jim Alf received a knock on his senior care facility door.
A spring ditch is revealed by degrees, as the days warm and elongate, as rain replaces snow, as the sun rises steadily higher over the souther…
The Midwest’s most well-known marathon, Grandma’s, takes place each June in Duluth, Minnesota. Closer to home, the Eau Claire Marathon is on A…
A few years ago, I sat down at the Joynt on Water Street and within five minutes a woman on the stool beside me confessed to growing up in a c…
It all seemed so simple at the start: run into the big box store, grab a birthday present for my youngest daughter, and then two-time it to my…
In mid-September, just before my father’s death, one of my best friends dating all the way back to when we were 11-year-old boys, Nik Novak, a…
Eau Claire native Jack Hildebrand has lived and worked on four continents. Back in 2022, before his next excursion, he and wife Maya came to L…
The morning before Thanksgiving — as winter’s chill frosted the tips of the trees — I loaded my daughters into the van, and together, we struc…
Yes, I did already own no less than two, possibly three copies of Tom Waits’ album “The Heart of Saturday Night.” But as I was sifting through…
Almost three years ago, a crew of volunteers transformed the former Northwoods Motel on Highway OO in Lake Hallie into a village of 14 tiny ho…
The origins of the Eau Claire Global Market can be traced to 1966, when 21-year-old Ginny Close — an Eau Claire native — was living in a remot…
Tuesday, October 31st. Halloween.
No one, and I mean no one, starts a literary journal with the goal of fortune and glory. Never happens. Unthinkable.
Just after dawn I drove north into Eau Claire. It was the morning of my 17th anniversary, and I wanted to surprise my wife with locally grown …
From the front porch, from the hammock, from the garden, I hear it most evenings. Not the steady soundtrack of frogs, insects, birdsong, wind …
On a recent Saturday afternoon, I stood in Jordan Hagedorn’s store, For the Hobby Sports Cards, at the site of the old Buroker’s Taxidermy, Ba…
I recently went on my fifth (almost annual) Cousins Tavern Tour. Bobby Schroedel’s mother and mine were sisters. Though Bernice and Virgie rai…
One Tuesday morning in June my husband realized his achiness and stuffy nose were likely more than seasonal allergies. I dug out our governmen…
Have you ever wondered how many people collect matchbooks?
There is a moment on this wide continent of North America when all the combines are named Hiawatha. And all those combines are of the Ojibwa n…
I first met Frank Betz one January afternoon while roaming the Antique Emporium. He was a wry-smiled, carefully coiffed, tow-headed 20-year-ol…
The Black Rock Desert in Nevada hosts Burning Man every summer on what used to be an ancient lakebed. Anyone who’s been there will tell you it…
His name was Lyndon, pastor to the Liberty Corners Methodist kirk at the corner of County Trunk J and Old Amish Road. I was newly out of the s…
Upon unloading our gear at the Coon Fork County Park campsite, my wife Meredith is reminded that I am still not the seasoned camper I pretend to be.
In the summer of 1972, Rhinelander Mayor Claribel Prosser received a letter from Clayton Bailey, curator of Wonders of the World Museum in Cal…
Controversy surrounding a recently proposed housing development on Lake Hallie prompted me to dig back into a time before there were any homes here.
A few weeks back, my father-in-law turned to his sister and said, “I’ve only got one goal left. I want to live long enough to see my tomatoes …