Nathan Kitzmann

I can't remember exactly why I started writing this column four years ago. I'm sure I needed the money (know so, in fact), and I was desperate for the attention I thought it would afford me. More than that, though -- if my memory serves me at all -- I wanted to find sort of answer,...

Last week, I was shaken out of my peaceful summer dream by a headline. The stock market dropped over 600 points on Monday, signaling a possible slide into our 10th Great Recession in two months. I scanned down the page, looking for some good news, but the dream didn't return....

Somewhere between feeling sorry for myself and single-handedly taking down The System, I came to a place where I realized I was enjoying this summer. Of course, I resisted the thought at first. People like me don't have time to frolic and fish -- or even get our rods wet. I am...

Washington, D.C. -- President Barack Obama has officially declared today, this July 11, 2011, a National Day of Laughter. The proclamation comes in a time in desperate need of good cheer. The United States government is ideologically stretched to its breaking point, and teetering...

Andy Warhol once said that "in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes." This must have seemed like nonsense in the 1960s, when there were only a handful of household names and the boundary between "celebrity" and "mere mortal" was drawn clearly in the sand. If you...

"I want to be forgotten, and I don't want to be reminded." That is the opening line to one of my favorite songs of late, "What Ever Happened" by the Strokes. I sang along to it on the way to church one day last week, mimicking the singer's jaded, tired-sounding voice all-too well....

DETROIT LAKES, MN -- Sarah Palin's One Nation bus tour made an accidental stop in Detroit Lakes last Wednesday, offering locals a chance to catch a glimpse of the controversial politician in action. Allegedly, Palin arrived in the small, Northern Minnesota town after spotting a...

After all that, this was it. My classmates and I had just graduated, had just crossed the gymnasium stage into a new chapter of life. We will eventually many forget many of the kids we went to high school with, as we grow older and start living our futures in new, separate worlds....

I have always blamed my mediocre math ability on heritage or being a "creative," right-brained, left-handed individual. My mind wasn't designed for math, I tell myself. There is no use force-feeding it. Plenty of people are happy to spend their lives crunching numbers and solving...

Ten years ago this September, I sat in a classroom to watch my childhood end in a pile of carnage, death and mass hysteria. I was too young then to understand much, but I knew that the people who made the towers come down were evil, and the ones who cheered to see so many lives lost...

It wasn't the bombs dropping or the women wailing or the ocean rolling in that told me this was, indeed, the end of the world. It was the music -- a soft, jazzy number that sounded like it might have been from the '40s -- beaming in from the heavens, projecting itself into every...

Watch TV. Get bored. Is that my guitar I see in the corner, waiting patiently to be fingered? Sounds like an idea. I strum a B, an A, and a D minor, and decide that I am no good. I drive to the library, and stand in front of the rows and rows of books. My knees tremble and my...

Growing up, classical music was a large part of my life. It just wasn't a particularly pleasant one. To me, it meant Saturday afternoon chores: there was always some Brahms or Schubert to accompany the long hours of scrubbing orange scum off the toilet or sweeping the kitchen....