The most recent administrator, Keith Hiller, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, noted in an organizational assessment many anonymous staff complaints about the mayor, according to a copy of the report.
Sunday, December 14, 2025
Sunday Reflection: Subject of Grace
The end of the year is a combination of hurried and quiet for academics. The hallways are quiet, but for us there is a lot to get done: grading to do, finishing writing projects, and preparing for the next semester. I have been deep in a writing hole, which is a place I like to be.
On Friday I was getting ready to leave and went down to check my mail. There was a big box on top of the cubbies with my name on it.
I was curious-- I didn't expect a big box, as I hadn't ordered anything. Sometimes a big box like that contains reprints of an article, but it did not look like that kind of box. I took it back to my office and opened it up.
Inside was a cornucopia of things: A gorgeous leather travel bag, a leather belt, a stack of handmade winter hats, earrings and several wallets and satchels. They were all beautiful. They even included two crocheted animals they made for a student whose wife just had a baby.
There was also a note. It was from a man named Luke, who is in prison at Sandstone FCI. In part, the note said this:
Dear Professor Osler,
Here are some Christmas gifts from me and my friends here in Sandstone. We wanted you to know we were thinking of all of you as you advocate for us in the system. I explained to my friends that your students chose to take the clemency clinic with the sole purpose of helping people in prison...
Luke is not someone we have actually helped; he is still in prison and other lawyers have helped him with his petitions. He owes us nothing, not even thanks.
How is that for Christmas? How lucky am I, are we?
I've always been taken by Jesus's teaching that when we visit those in prison we visit Him (Matthew 25:36). But what does it mean when they visit you?
Saturday, December 13, 2025
More about the Nobel Peace Prize...
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Haiku Friday: Winter fun
It really is winter here now-- there is over a foot of snow on the ground, it will be below zero this weekend, and the rinks are frozen and ready to go! I love winter fun, so let's haiku about that this week-- even if you live in Virginia or wherever. Here, I will go first:
Can't wait to glide fast
Over and around the lake
Hello, skinny skis!
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable formula and have some fun...
PMT: Very Local Mayhem
Minnesota sometimes does not seem like a very big state; it's a place where local politics and state politics often merge. That's the case with a situation up in Nisswa, a town of 2,000 in "cabin country" in the middle of the state. I've been there, and it is a very pleasant little town with a great bike trail (the Paul Bunyan Trail) going right through the middle.
Nisswa is the home of a woman named Jennifer Carnahan, who was a state figure five years ago, when she was the state chair of the Republican Party here (and was married to U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who died in 2022). Things got weird in 2021, when a key supporter of hers, Anton Lazzaro, was indicted for child sex trafficking. In the wake of the scandal, she stepped down as state chair. She then ran for her deceased husband's seat in Congress, but came in third in the Republican primary. In 2024 she ran for mayor of little Nisswa, and won.
Then things got weird again. Here are some excerpts from an article in yesterday's Star-Tribune:
Carnahan is the former chair of the Republican Party of Minnesota after
getting pushed out of that job. She did not attend a special meeting
called Wednesday to discuss her conduct. More than 40 residents filled
the room the morning after a snowstorm dumped 8 inches in the area...
They called the special meeting after Carnahan recently claimed online
that she was physically assaulted by a resident. That resident had sent
Carnahan an email addressing what she felt was unfit conduct for a
mayor. The resident denied assaulting Carnahan, and prosecutors twice
declined to press charges...
Amid a mixture of comments, some of the complaints include: “Our Mayor is a bully, she’s political, and a terrible leader”; “The Mayor is a problem, period”; “The Mayor has no experience with City governance. She got elected and is now ‘top of the food chain.’ ”...
It started with an email that Sophie Foster, 27, sent the mayor on Nov. 20 after she said she overheard Carnahan in the Nisswa bar and restaurant where Foster works talking about ways to get Zahn off the council.
In an interview Tuesday before the meeting, Carnahan denied discussing this at the restaurant.
Foster emailed Carnahan and Council Member Joe Hall in defense of Zahn and asked Carnahan to apologize.
“Multiple of us overheard hostile/rude comments about him, which I’ve been told is not a new thing for you,” Foster’s email read.
Carnahan never replied to the email. A week later, after the city’s annual holiday lights parade, Carnahan said she was aggressively confronted by Foster outside the municipal bar Ye Old Pickle Factory.
I have so many questions, and none of them are really about the quite feisty mayor, Jennifer Carnahan.
So, the conservative town of Nisswa has a city-owned bar? That may be my new favorite form of socialism. And... said bar, rather than being called "The Nisswa Municipal Bar" or something is called "Ye Old Pickle Factory?" I'll be honest-- when I read that part of the article I was tempted to go to my car immediately and drive the 2 hours and 35 minutes to Nisswa to check that out. The official city web site lists Ye Old Pickle Factory as a "department," and one where "the beer hits the spot." The Yelp reviews are mixed, with a rating of 3.4 out of 5 and comments that refer to "frozen deep-fried food from Costco," "atrocious" service and an incident where a woman was shoved to the ground for wearing a mask at the heart of the COVID outbreak. Most interesting to me were the number of reviews that refer to the Pickle as a "dive bar"-- so it is not just a municipal bar, but a city-owned dive bar, and one where tourists are treated like dirt.
If I do go to Ye Old Pickle Factory, I will post photos. Promise.
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
So much snow....
We are having our second snow storm of the year here in Minnesota and it is awesome. I know the picture above makes a lot of people think "why would you live there?" but other people know the answer.
I love the change of seasons, to see everything transformed. And that is what we have right now...
Tuesday, December 09, 2025
The Song Stuck in Your Head
My whole life I have had songs that just get stuck in my head. Most persistent (and horrifyingly), the song "Hot Crossed Buns" often goes on a loop in there and I can't do anything about it. Plus, only one verse is on repeat, so it becomes like a mosquito in my ear.
Today, it was this song that got stuck in there:
I'm not sure why, since I probably have only heard it a few times (I don't spend a lot of time listening to "Lite Regular" on the radio).
Science people at Harvard believe that these songs may get lodged in there because they are tied to specific memories and emotions:
There’s involvement of the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe of the brain that supports musical perception, and connections between that cortex and deep temporal-lobe areas, like the hippocampus or parahippocampal gyrus, that are important in memory encoding and retrieval. The phonological loop has been implicated — the process of holding something in your mind, like a mental scratchpad, for a certain number of seconds. So there are networks in the brain that support these functions of music — and memory, and attention, and keeping something in your head, and working memory. And then there’s the connection to the emotional regions of the brain, like the amygdala, which is involved in salience and negative emotion, and the ventral striatum, or nucleus accumbens, which is involved with positive emotion and reward. These are all elements that are thought to be involved in earworms.
What happens is that connections in our brains involving these regions get “stuck,” resulting in an automatic playing out of musical memories.
If that's true, why is it frigging "Hot Crossed Buns" that is tied to some memory or emotion?!?
Monday, December 08, 2025
Such beauty
Oh! There were just four haiku this week, but they were spectacular! First we had this from my mom:
I breath cold crisp air
as I pick up my paper.
A single star shines.
as I pick up my paper.
A single star shines.
Mary S. went deep:
The moon on the breast
Of the new fallen snow, gives
Luster of daylight.
Of the new fallen snow, gives
Luster of daylight.
Christine did, too
There was a full moon
The cold moon, but here it was
Covered by thick clouds.
The cold moon, but here it was
Covered by thick clouds.
And Anonymous nailed it:
I breath cold crisp air
as I pick up my paper.
A single star shines.
as I pick up my paper.
A single star shines.
Sunday, December 07, 2025
Sunday Reflection: John the Baptist
John the Baptist has always fascinated me. Here is how he is described in Matthew:
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom
of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”
Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts
and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region
along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
The fascinating thing to me is that anyone looked at him and said "that dude has it going on! Time to get baptized!" But they did, even though he wasn't claiming to be the prophet, just to know who was coming.
That's a lot of trust-- someone you don't know telling you to believe in someone who isn't there yet. But in a way we do things like that all the time; we make choices because there is something that makes sense to us about what is being claimed.
I'm not sure I would have followed John's direction, since I am kind of a skeptic-- but I know in my heart that people did.
Saturday, December 06, 2025
A relevant Big 10 Championship!
Tonight the #1 team in the country, Ohio State, will play the #2 team in the country, Indiana, in the Big Ten Championship. It's a lot of red and white. It's also bonkers that Indiana is where it is.
In 129 years of play, Indiana has won the Big Ten Championship twice: in 1945 (during World War II) and in 1967. That's... not very often. In the past several decades, they have been the hapless team that others tried to schedule for their own homecoming games.
Suddenly-- quite suddenly-- that has changed, with the arrival of a new coach from James Madison. Curt Cignetti has worked some kind of miracle, and tonight may be the high point. And even if they lose, Indiana, undefeated up to this point, is going to be in the playoffs.
You can probably tell who I will be rooting for...
Friday, December 05, 2025
Haiku Friday: Images of the season
This is one of my favorite times of the year, and part of it is because of the beauty all around: the snow, the lights, the scenes of people gathering. Let's haiku about that this week. Here, I will go first:
That lingering light
That stays after dinner, soft
A part of the love.
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern and have some fun!
Thursday, December 04, 2025
Snow Mayhem Thursday!
Technically, it isn't winter yet. But here in Minnesota, it's winter-- and thank goodness! There is snow on the ground. It is seven degrees outside. The smell of wood smoke is in the air.
For those of us who thrive on the change of seasons, these are the magic moments....
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
The Weave and the Merge
Yesterday was a weird and disturbing day at the White House. President Trump called Somali-Americans "garbage," and proclaimed that President Biden's grants of clemency were "void" if signed by autopen.
Every day, it seems, there are some provocations like this. But if you step back from the daily sturm and drang, there is something remarkable going on: Trump is becoming a lot like Biden--the caricature of Biden he is still obsessed with-- in some important ways.
First, both Biden and Trump are elderly men who suffer all that goes with that. Trump refers to Biden as "Sleepy Joe," but now it is Trump who seems to be dozing off at meetings.
Second, it seems that as his term proceeds Trump is increasingly surrounded by a small group of protective advisors who limit access to him. This was a predominant feature of the Biden administration, and not a good one.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Trump is replicating one of Biden's worst strategic errors: insisting that inflation is under control when affordability issues are very real to people who don't live in gilded mansions. Here is what the New York Times reported from yesterday's cabinet meeting:
After ticking off what he claimed were trillions of dollars of investments and other economic accomplishments, Mr. Trump called the issue of affordability a “fake narrative” and “con job” created by Democrats to dupe the public.
Trump's words even contain Biden's frustration that people won't focus on what he wants them to see rather than what they actually see in their own lives.
Biden was wrong to run for a second term-- as IPLawGuy pointed out years before he made the decision, he was just too old. In the end, in a race with time, time always wins. And it is winning again.
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Snow Bowl!
Last Saturday, I went to the Minnesota-Wisconsin game. It snowed the whole time, the temperature was about 20, and people here seemed to love it (that's an actual picture I took partway through the game). It's a big rivalry game-- they play for "Paul Bunyan's Axe"-- and the crowd was really up for it; the great majority stayed to the end, which featured the Minnesota players and cheerleaders making snow angels after a 17-7 victory.
Yes, these people are crazy. But, I was one of those who stayed, so....
Monday, December 01, 2025
Recaps of the feast
It sounds like it was a good holiday for Razorites! For example, CraigA had a great day:
Broke bread with my big
Brother for first time in a
Year and a half, thanks!
Brother for first time in a
Year and a half, thanks!
Des had dog show near-misses:
Foxhound— runner up
at the dog show. So close! Pie
helps soften blow.
at the dog show. So close! Pie
helps soften blow.
Christine had a mistake that worked out:
Baked with wrong pan
A fabulous pumpkin cake
Whipped cream dallop.
A fabulous pumpkin cake
Whipped cream dallop.
And Anonymous had people people people!:
Saw so many friends!
They are what I'm grateful for
Joy for these moments.
They are what I'm grateful for
Joy for these moments.
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Sunday Reflection: The first Sunday of Advent
I love Thanksgiving. I love Christmas. But I also love the season between the two, which we enter today: Advent.
It's a season some Christians blow right past in the business that precedes Christmas, but is beloved by others. The essence of it is quiet anticipation, a rare thing for many of us.
One reason that I love it is that it is a challenge to me, personally. A lot of my life is about trying to complete tasks, create change, and get things done, all of which is antithetical to waiting patiently for something I have no control over.
And that's the beauty of it. We are so often told to "be ourselves," but sometimes it is wonderfully humbling to turn that off and listen to something greater than ourselves.
Saturday, November 29, 2025
The Remix
Friday, November 28, 2025
Haiku Friday: Thanksgiving Recap
I hope that everyone had a spectacular Thanksgiving! It was quite a day here, full of family, football and food. Let's recap in haiku today; here, I will go first:
Opened the old wine
This was the moment, the time--
Waited thirty years.
Now it is your turn! Just use the 5/7/5 syllable pattern, and have some fun!
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Happy Thanksgiving!
I do love this holiday, even in difficult times for our country-- perhaps it is more important now than ever.
At my house, there will be two high-quality meals (I'm making my "famous chicken nachos" for lunch) and a lot of houseguests-- 14 for Thanksgiving dinner, followed by traditional Thanksgiving Kitchen Dancing.
There really is a way that a holiday that forces us to focus on the good is well-timed right now. I am convinced that our challenges are short-term, and that we have the capacity to do better. More importantly, I know that there are wonderful things right now if we choose to see them, too-- including those dancing houseguests and that beautiful turkey and maybe even my nachos.
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
The day before...
Today is one of my favorite days of the year-- when people arrive from all directions for Thanksgiving. I have a bunch already here, a sister driving in today, and then at midnight a nephew flying in.
For thanksgiving dinner there will be people I have known my whole life and a few people I will be meeting for the first time-- which is just the way it is supposed to be.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Thanksgiving Prep FAQ pt. 2
Dear Razor,
Last week, you told me to get a 45-pound turkey. I went to the store and the biggest one they had was 22 pounds. The butcher said that a 45 pound turkey would be a "freak of nature," and that I had my "head up my ass." What's the deal?
Confused
Dear Confused,
You obviously need to go to a different store. That store you went to both stocks tiny turkeys and they are pretty rude. If there is not another store available, buy two 22-pound turkeys and one one-pound turkey and tape them together before roasting.
Yours,
O. Razor
-----------------------------------------------
Dear Razor,
Our theme for Thanksgiving this year is "Harry Potter." Will it be too scary for small children if my husband dresses as Voldemort?
Hermione
Dear Hermione,
First of all, your name is ridiculous. If it wasn't for the movies, no one would ever know how to pronounce it. As it is, the nation now has suffered two generations of 11-year-olds blathering on about "Herm-ee-own-ee."
Second, Thanksgiving already has a theme! You don't need to give it another one. So sell the costumes. Also make sure to get a large enough turkey.
Yours,
O. Razor
Monday, November 24, 2025
Thankful
Three great poems this week. I love when Gavin stops by:
We live far from home.
Again, new friends take us in.
I give thanks for that.
Again, new friends take us in.
I give thanks for that.
And Christine has small big plans:
I set the table
Fine china, silver, crystal
Just dinner for two.
Fine china, silver, crystal
Just dinner for two.
And Jill Scoggins has a (logical) question:
Cornbread dressing is
my fave. So why don’t I make
it all year? Why??? Hmmmmm.
my fave. So why don’t I make
it all year? Why??? Hmmmmm.
