Author Archives: kwinker

Jello Theory in a Dream

I had a dream.

I was sitting down to eat lunch in a cafeteria with a little boy, and on our trays we each had a square of green jello with cottage cheese in it (I know—nasty stuff). For some reason hidden deeply in my twisted brain, I decided to tell the boy about where green jello came from.

“Did you know green jello comes from squeezing the heads of Presidents? If they’re really smart, you get more of those chunks. But presidents are busy people, so you just don’t get green jello every day.”

The boy carefully thought about this for awhile. Then he said, “Where does red jello come from?”

“Oh, that comes from the tears of the damned. There’s a factory in Indianapolis, but nobody can live within a mile of it because of the screams of the damned. Only deaf people can work there.”

I have no idea why I remembered this in such detail when I woke up, but I figured others might be interested in the latest developments in jello theory.

Of Moose, Rivers, and People

It’s taken my mind awhile to get to writing this post. There has been a surreal poignancy to the world for many months, causing normal activities to seem abnormal, bogged down, and harder to sustain. The COVID-19 pandemic and abysmal government leadership cause enormous stress, as does the unusually high degree of political divisiveness during this election year. Work levels have been high, too, and I hadn’t taken enough days off.

So when September came, and with it hunting season, I looked forward to getting away on a float trip with a couple of friends to hunt for moose. Just getting outside and off the grid would be therapeutic—and it was.

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