"With a voice that's part Annie Dillard and part Mike Royko, Bill McDonald helps us see the familiar world with the wonder, humor, and clarity it deserves. From building a community center in present-day Guatemala, to tending cattle in Dust Bowl South Dakota; from envisioning a farm of the future on which fields are harvested by remote control, to drinking coffee with a group of self-proclaimed geezers in a small town diner, these essays take on a range of subjects, but at their common core is the resilience of human reason, wit, and imagination." - Richard Terrill , author of Saturday Night in Boading: A China Memoir . The Oasis Cafe was a modest lunch counter long before Stillwater, MN became a Mecca of haute cuisine and trendy wine bars. A nod of his head brings Bill McDonald his coffee and wheat toast there each morning. What Bill brings back to us in this book is a literary tapestry that warms the heart and stimulates the mind. A masterful storyteller of local, yet universal, experiences, Bill serves up ideas that are as rich and complex as the Oasis is thrifty and unadorned. -- Ann Wolff , Stillwater.