The Alley Newspaper

Smiling helps. That’s it. I have nothing more profound than that. I have been reminded lately how important it is to give and receive smiles, so I thought I would remind everyone else. We have one community member at Peace House Community who I mentally associate with smiling. He and I rarely speak to each […]

One of the worst pieces of advice I ever followed was that I should throw a piece of spaghetti at a wall to test whether it was done. Looking back, I realized the person who told me this was either playing a practical joke or was the victim of someone else’s joke. All that throwing

I know several people who are trying to avoid the news these days for various reasons. I myself pay less attention to current events than I should, partly from laziness, but also because so much of the “news” coverage focuses on the wrong things. Despite how easy it is to get information, one has to

Like many people, I have watched Elon Musk’s dismantling of the federal government with everything from bemusement to unspeakable foreboding. The bemusement comes from Musk’s own claims that he is making the government more efficient. If that was the real intent of the Department of Government Efficiency, Musk would be equivalent of the kid whose

My daughter and I enjoy watching the British murder mystery comedy series Death In Paradise. In many ways, it is mindless fun, and as with most mysteries, there is a plot twist somewhere along the way that leads to the unmasking of the murderer. Of course, the plot twist is always in the mind of

I’ve recently been reading various autobiographies. I started with Clint Malarchuk’s The Crazy Game, and am now working my way through What Does This Button Do? by Bruce Dickenson and My Effin’ Life by Geddy Lee. Malarchuk was a goalie in the National Hockey League who almost died on ice during a game after a

A couple of months ago, one of the community members at Peace House Community crawled under the table where we set out pastries so he could take a nap. A newer volunteer asked if this was okay, and I replied that as long as he was breathing and no one was going to trip over

I’ve had a hard time settling on a topic for this month’s column. I’m writing this about a week after the election, which is obviously a significant event, and the implications of the election results are big enough that I should probably say something. But you won’t read this until at least a couple of

I recently attended a meeting put on by the Minnesota Interagency Council on Homelessness (MICH). As is common these days, the meeting began with a land acknowledgement, which is a statement recognizing that what is now Minnesota was and is the homeland for various Native American tribes. The wording of a land acknowledgement is up

I recently travelled to Breezy Point, in northern Minnesota, to speak at a conference. Since the trip involved five hours of driving, I made sure I had some audiobooks to pass the time. I started listening to Taking the Work Out of Networking: An Introvert’s Guide to Making Connections That Count, and within an hour