Since the 2016 election season is in full throttle, this seems like a good time to revisit a historic happening involving a presidential candidate

“Robbery & Murder!” screamed the headline of the Rice County Journal of Sept. 7, 1876. “Desperate Attempt to Rob the Bank! J.L. Heywood Shot Dead at

Dad, why doesn’t Carleton play metric football?” That question, from Carleton chemistry professor Jerry Mohrig’s teenage son David, sparked a very special and unique

When Brian Sostek and Megan McClellan won the Ivey Award, which recognizes accomplishments of Twin Cities’ professional theaters and artists, on Sept. 21, 2015,

It isn’t often that Minneapolis’ major newspaper, the Associated Press and the CBS Morning News carry the results of a campaign for a college

The year 2016 marks the 125th anniversary of St. Olaf College’s first music organization, a group once led by F. Melius Christiansen. No, it

Let’s get this out of the way from the start. You can’t pay me enough to watch the 40 or more mostly mediocre (and

Originally Published in the June 2014 Entertainment Guide The late Dan Freeman (known as “Mr. Northfield”) had treasured memories from the times Doc Evans

“It’s here!” This note, with a big smiley face drawn on it, was in my mailbox at St. Olaf late in the first term

Carleton and St. Olaf have had a hot basketball rivalry since 1910 when  construction of Sayles-Hill Gym spurred annual clashes. They have battled for an

The opening game of the 1965-66 basketball season of the Northfield High School Raiders was to be played on the court of a new

An almost palpable air of excitement has hung over the Paradise Center for the Arts in Faribault ever since July 20, opening night of

Just two months shy of being elected president of the United States, Ike Eisenhower gave the only college address of his campaign in Northfield.

When I lived in New York and told anyone that my alma mater was St. Olaf, more often than not the response was, “Oh,

Within six years of the founding of Northfield in 1855, Northfield proudly flew its first U.S. flag. The Continental Congress had adopted the nation’s

You won’t find too many interviews with John S. Campbell, who founded a company to produce the cereal known as Malt-O-Meal in Owatonna in

A clause inserted into every deed of land by Northfield’s founder John North was “No intoxicating drinks shall be sold or in any manner

Northfielders reading Reed Whittemore’s memoir Against the Grain: The Literary Life of a Poet (Dryad Press, 2007) may have an irresistible urge to start with Chapter

From February 2007 to December 2016, I wrote 119 “Historic Happenings” columns for The Entertainment Guide. What have I been doing since my last column?

Dundas residents got an early glimpse of the precocious talent of 3-year-old Marilyn Sellars when, in the middle of a Sunday sermon at the

The upset victory of tiny Appalachian State over mighty Michigan in football this season has reminded me of two David and Goliath-type games played

In 1855, at the age of 40,  John Wesley North was ready for new challenges. A New Yorker by birth, he had moved to St.

In the spring of 2015 the Northfield Historical Society and The Entertainment Guide teamed up to publish volumes 2 and 3 of selected Historic Happenings columns about St. Olaf and Carleton. (Volume

“No matter where you go in the United States, it has been said, you will find someone who knows that Jesse James raided a