Blogs

It’s my professional duty to pry.

Quite often, someone will say, “You’ve got to come see my …” – meaning their new invention, their operation, their business model or their product. It runs against my editorial grain to promote any element, so we (as an editorial team) are pretty careful in the writing approach to these “front” stories, as I call them.

Collecting vintage machinery can be a tricky, expensive and time-consuming business or hobby. Sometimes we hear from folks about old machines that have been in a barn for years or just sitting abandoned on a farm somewhere.

From my perspective, I find social media to be, for the most part, a huge waste of time. It can be useful, to be sure, for a variety of reasons – but 10 minutes of productivity somehow usually evaporates into 45 wasted minutes viewing an array of ridiculous political rants, videos and borderline crude GIFs and memes.

I live on a dirt road that comes to a dead end at our house. It’s about a third of a mile off the highway. Directly to the west of where our road and the highway junction meet is a sugar beet dump operated by the regional sugar beet cooperative.

I’m sorry to interrupt. Excuse me. Pardon the interruption.

A story is told of Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, who was asked to speak at an anti-Nazi meeting in Brooklyn, whereupon he received numerous threatening letters, stating he would be killed if he attended or sought to address the rally.

Shaving. Washing your face. Buying gas or diesel for the vehicles. Mowing the lawn. And, in my end of the country, dealing with goat-heads or puncture vine. These are just some things that are regular, reoccurring – and not a big deal if done regularly.