Hello,

To this collection of like-minded individuals who gather together noplace. And there's noplace like home.

I find myself in a small town in southern Iowa called Pella. It's a small Dutch town and my name doesn' begin with Van. Van Johnson just doesn't have the right ring to it. Anyway, Thursday is the start of their Tulip Time festival, and the tourists are starting to swarm. About 125,000-150,000 people are estimated to visit during three days. Residents will entertain them with parades and activities and the tourists will spend their money on mouth-watering pastries, wooden shoes and miniature windmills. 

I wonder how many people actually ever wear the wooden shoes.

I still feel like a tourist myself, since I moved here only a couple of months ago from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Anyone been to the Casino on Pearl Street?

Today I read in the Startribune that the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota will be closing and possibly relocating to the Twin Cities. I grew up just outside of Eveleth (although my mailing address said Eveleth) and I know that the HOF was a great source of pride for the community. Hockey was their passion. As a youth who could not skate  very well and was more than a little undersized, this sport left me peering into local culture from behind the boards. This obsession with a violent sport didn't sit well with me, but I think I was jealous of others because of my lack of talent.

Now as a slightly more mature 25-year-old witnessing this from afar in Iowa, I empathize with the plight of this small town on the Iron Range. The iron..the hockey...it is all slowly disappearing.

It's winters are harsh, but the summer is spectacular. If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of the Northwoods, begging you take a stroll through their wilderness...and when one does, they are left with a deep sense of appreciation. Or if they are a greedy capitalist...a dream of development!

I do not want to see my small town perish and become simply a resort destination for young urban professonials in their hybrid SUV's.

I've recently purchased the first two season of the early-nineties sitcom "Dinosaurs" and I had forgotten just how political the show was, and how it probably had an effect on my young mind; helping to shape the man I am today.

For those who don't remember, the show centered on Earl Sinclair and his family of five. The man characters all had names from the petroleum industry: Sinclair, B.P. Richfield, Hess, Ethyl.

I finished an episode that made light of modern man's obsession with television. When Grandma Ethyl utters that television has led to "degradation in our society, we should write letters," the mother Fran advises her to get a life. But yet the whole 23-minutes was about how TV has ruined "family-time". No wonder the show had a somewhat short shelf-life.

As a kid I enjoyed the teenager, Robbie, and now as an adult I can see why. He was always questioning why things were the way the were, when asked to start a conversation at the dinner table he says, "Well I've been thinking a lot about the nature of reality," and moves on to the whole tree in a forest bit. He also questions why at the age of 72 all dinosaurs had to be hurled into the tar pit, thus ruining his father's fun as he was preparing to throw Grandman Ethyl over the cliff.

Now that I've watched and learned some lessons from this prehistoric family, I think I'll go unplug my television for awhile.