Behind the Lines: by David Heiller

David Heiller It’s shaping up to be a strange Christmas. There’s no snow! That could change in the next 15 days. But part of me thinks that this will be a brown Christmas. I’m not complaining about the weather. We deserve another winter off. But my brother-in-law, Randy, made a good point on Sunday. We were driving across the brown landscape of suburban Minneapolis on a bleak Sunday afternoon. I was singing the praises of the mild weather we’ve had so far. But it doesn’t feel like Christmas, he said, unless there is snow on the ground. I thought about that, and I hate to admit when my brother-in-law is right, but he is right. It doesn’t feel like Christmas yet, and I think lack of snow is to blame. Partly. Take the Christmas tree outing. Usually when we cut a Christmas tree, we drag it home on a sled. Sometimes we’ve got snowshoes on our feet, the snow is so deep. This year, late last Saturday afternoon, I put on a light jacket, hopped on the tractor with the traile...

David Heiller Several people commented on my column about Bag Balm: Mona Sjoblom, Sharon Zimmer, June Christensen, Edwin Muse, and Fern Heiller, among others. Here is what they said. I won’t put the names with the comments. I like to protect my sources. But you can have fun guessing. One person said she uses bag balm on her feet, but doesn’t have a problem with it staining the sheets, because she doesn’t glop it on as thickly as I do. (You don’t know what you’re missing.) Another person said Bag Balm was good for two other uses: chapped lips and hemorrhoids. Fortunately I can’t verify the latter. Another person called to thank me for writing about Bag Balm. She said she used it for her dry skin caused by diabetes. She buys it in 4-1/2- pound cans (that’s a lot of hemorrhoids), and likes to give it away to her kids. Another person wrote in a letter which is printed on this page: “Then we used it for diaper rash. It was better and healed faster than any of the other thing...