Rural

Saturday

Amber Duke

Hunters laugh off the Harris-Walz campaign effort to win their vote

Avid outdoorsmen are slamming a new political coalition formed by the Harris-Walz campaign aimed at winning their vote in the 2024 presidential election. “Hunters and anglers want to support Harris-Walz as much as the fish and game want to be eaten,” one Maryland-based hunter who recently bagged a state record bear chuckled to The Spectator. Governor Tim Walz kicked off the “Hunters and Anglers for Harris-Walz” group on Friday with an article placed in Outdoor Life magazine. The coalition is described as “a new national organizing program to engage, mobilize a broad coalition of sportspeople, conservationists and rural and gun violence prevention voters in key states across the country.

hunters Embroidered campaign hats of US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor and Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

Tuesday

Hannah Moore

A cowboy Christmas

Christmas dinner for American pioneers was modeled on an English Christmas, for those who could afford it. Families with enough money served turkey, plum pudding, preserved fruits, mince pies, meringues and perhaps even a fresh ham. Children in the Midwest might wake on Christmas morning to find strings of candy and raisins draped on the tree, and wafers, gingerbread or oranges hidden in their stockings. Parents would give gifts of wooden toys, dolls made from corn husks, little glass baubles and colored ribbons for the tree. But in remote places on the western frontier, Christmas often meant providing food and accommodation for travelers and strangers.

Christmas

Saturday

Teresa Mull

Mowing the lawn is underrated

I struggle to enjoy summer. So each year, when the last frost drifts away to Australia, or wherever it goes, I grit my teeth and remind myself of the most “hot girl summer” moment I’ve ever had, and look forward to reliving the pleasure of lawn mowing that brought it about: I was house-sitting for my parents at our old farmstead in rural Pennsylvania. One of the responsibilities of this job is to put the trash out for the trashmen every week, because more than a decade ago, a little black bear got into the refuse and scattered it from our house to Kingdom Come. The trash shed has been guarded by a thin piece of electrified barbed wire that has deterred both bruin and garbage collector with equal efficacy ever since.

lawn