Author Archives: Kim & Jim

Just Talking About…Our Temperature Sweet Spot

Just Talking About…Our Temperature Sweet Spot March 21, 2021.  You know how, sometime in late spring or maybe early summer, you step outside without a coat on, feel a certain gentleness in the slight wind brushing your face, see the … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Dream-Listers

May 24, 2020.  There are many birders, but fewer life-listers.  The former are serious enough bird watchers to stop dead in their tracks and look up when they hear the call of an uncommon bird passing overhead.  I’ve done that … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…People in the Middle of Nowhere

November 7, 2019.  In the photo here your first thought is…not much.  That’s because, to our civilized eyes, there is nothing interesting to see.  The horizon line dominates the scene, not a building, road or cell tower to interrupt it.  … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Derechos and Other Inconveniences in Nature

July 4, 2019.  Twenty years ago to the day as I write this, winds spawned by a fast-moving weather front tore through Minnesota’s Boundary Waters and adjacent Quetico, Canada, at speeds of over 90 mph, snapping the tops off 200-year-old … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Paying Attention & The Turtle Pilgrimage

August 1, 2019.  I have a reverse commute—starting in urban St. Paul, driving southwest through the suburbs, then into the countryside of Spring Lake Township south of Prior Lake.  It gets more and more pleasant the closer to the office … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Wandering Sedge Mats

June 1, 2018.  Several years ago I skated across the lake near which my office sits and found a lovely patch of the ancient Midwest.  It was a sedge meadow—a place where life had gone on pretty much as it … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Cemetery Coyotes

February 18, 2018.  Taking a walk through Graceland Cemetery at Clark and Irving Park in Chicago we watched a coyote watching us.  At a distance of a hundred yards and in poor light, we could only see its outline—in profile … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Coincidence, Significance, and the Super Blue Blood Moon

February 1, 2018.  I’d been anticipating it for a week, so yesterday I woke up in my usual fog, made coffee and a lunch, forgot to shave, and hustled out the door to -7 F temperatures and a car dusted … Continue reading

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Just Talking About…Roads As Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, Part 2

December 27, 2017.  It’s been fifteen years since I started commuting from St. Paul to my country office, and it’s time to take stock.  In that time Highway 8—or 220th Street in the extended Minneapolis street grid system (evidence of … Continue reading

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Just Thinking About…Roads As Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, Part 1

October 25, 2017. Years ago in a former job and former life, there was a man in the volunteer leadership of the organization I worked for who was a transportation planner and engineer. He was also highly placed in the … Continue reading

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