Free Republic

and will I die if I do?

With the below average temperatures we have been having this past week there are a few fish houses starting to show up on the lakes. We must remind ourselves that although the air temperature is low there may be safety hazards because of the snow cover that we had on the ice before the below-average temperatures arrived. Proceeding onto the newly formed ice with caution is a must. Watching for pockets of thin ice hidden under a layer of snow is a good way to prevent a dangerous situation and keep you from being a statistic. As we near the...

Decorah, IA - The debris-strewn streets of this remote Midwestern hamlet remain under a tense 24-hour curfew tonight, following weekend demonstrations by rock- and figurine-throwing Lutheran farm wives that left over 200 people injured and leveled the Whippy Dip dairy freeze. The rioting appeared to be prompted, in part, by a report in Newsweek magazine claiming military guards at Spirit Lake’s notorious Okoboji internment center had flushed lutefisk down prison toilets. Newsweek’s late announcement of a retraction seems to have done little to quell the inflamed passions of Lutheran insurgents in the region, as outbreaks of violent mailbox bashings and...

DAY, MINN. - There's something fishy in Day. Hundreds of people make an annual pilgrimage to this tiny Minnesota town in search of an ethnic treat that many of them have waited all year to feast on at Christmas dinner. You either love it or you loathe it: It's lutefisk. In an old creamery facility -- miles off the beaten path in rural Isanti County -- Roy Bolling, along with his brother, Walter, and nephew, Dave, are in the business of making sure hungry Scandinavians get their lutefisk fix. The Bollings have been processing lutefisk since 1968 and, in recent...