Archive for the ‘Family’ Category


Muammar: A note on my mother’s nickname

My mom’s name has been in the news a LOT lately. About six or seven years ago, at some point, she began referring to herself as “Muammar,” a take on Muammar Ghaddafi’s name, but we would most often spell it simply “Momar.” If you hadn’t guessed, this is more than anything a play on the [...]

March 30th, 2011

Please excuse my protracted silences

It is unbelievable the kind of things that are unfolding right now in the world. We’ve started air strikes in Libya, and uprisings continue all across the Middle East and North Africa, most recently becoming violent in Syria. (It is rather jarring to think that the tipping point–or rather, the catalyst–for all of this was [...]

March 27th, 2011

A break from the regular, for a personal reminiscence: my Klingelhutz family

When I was thirteen years old, I drove a four-wheeler into one of the drainage waterways running through a series of farm fields in Annandale, Minnesota. The fields were behind the Klingelhutz’s house, where my Uncle Rick, Auntie Sally, and their three kids lived in a small, cul-de-sac neighborhood; the four-wheeler was theirs. To this [...]

November 2nd, 2010