John Freivalds New Book  Ramblin' Man is here!!  Click here for more details

How to Avoid Cruise Control

By John Freivalds

I just got one of those Caribbean cruise offers in the mail. This one is to Belize and one feature is an onshore excursion of a two-hour walk through a rainforest for $100. Yikes!  When I was in the Peace Corps I was paid $90 a month for two years to live in a rainforest!

By John Freivalds

Published 08/31/2017

Freivalds runs an international communications firm in Lexington.

God helps those who help themselves.

Benjamin Franklin in 1757 made up those words that many think are from the Bible. They came up recently when I watched a 1960 classic movie “Elmer Gantry” starring Bert Lancaster. In it, Lancaster turns to marketing salvation as being far more profitable than selling vacuum cleaners in rural America. This was really the first public airing of the intellectual dishonesty of some evangelists. Then rallies were in tents seating hundreds, while today one televangelist holds services in an 18,000-seat stadium.

Women in Washington

Linda Kelley Freivalds in Washington, DC

May 2017

At the Fenced off White House

• My trip really started upon boarding plane -- also on board Rep. Keith Ellison and Mpls Fed Chair Neel Kashkari both in jeans and sitting in coach!
• I met my childhood friend, Leslie Briggs, at National Airport. Leslie and I had not seen each other from her wedding day in 1968 until two years ago when we attended our 50th high school class reunion. We spent a few days in Boston and had a wonderful time -- it was like we had always been close! Our birthdays are four days apart and we decided to spend our 70th on a "girls" holiday together and chose Washington, DC as it is so beautiful in the spring (well anytime actually).

Published 4/24/17

By John Freivalds

I do love the warm weather and the arrival of spring, but unwelcome visitors are the hundreds of Harley-Davidson motorcycles that starting noisily plying around the lake and where we live on Hennepin County Road 19.

Honda and BMW motorcycles don’t attract the type of riders who want to make as much noise as possible. A Harley with straight pipes (no muffler) gives off 100 decibels. That same as a car horn at the distance, according Purdue University.