When it comes to finding available men in Minnesota, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

If the marriage needs help, the answer almost always is have more fun. Drop your list of grievances and go ride a roller coaster.

She gave him such a look... Man oh man, if looks could kill. That one might have totalled a city block.

Welcome to Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

Forget what you learned about poetry in school. (That it's complex, opaque, a problem to be solved in 1500 words by tomorrow.) Poetry is the last preserve of honest speech and the outspoken heart. It holds the cadence of common life. It has a passion for truth and justice and liberty; it is a buoy to people in ordinary trouble: to a friend whose life has gone skidding into the meridian, who has been struck by bad news, who is frying eggs and hash browns and has whiny child clinging to his pant leg.

A married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. Women, thanks to their having been oppressed all these years, are blameless, free as birds, and all the dirt they do is the result of premenstrual syndrome or postmenstrual stress or menopause or emotional disempowerment by their fathers or low expectations by their teachers or latent unspoken sexual harassment in the workplace, or some other airy excuse. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful.

Winter: It's not just a season, it's who we are.