From the Archives · 50 Years Ago
Fifty Years Ago This Week in the Pilot-Independent
June 1976: the same corner is discussed, the lake is two feet low, and the pavilion holds a dance.
Read the full story →Vol. CXXIX — No. 23 · Archive Section
The Klatch & Living
Tuesday, June 9, 2026 · June 9 Edition · Full weekly section page with current issue material, standing notices, and back-page items.
Living Features
Living · Eunice’s Kitchen
The Tater-Top Hotdish, As It Was Meant to Be
A defense of the classic against all comers, plus the one substitution the author will permit, and only that one.
Read the full story →The Klatch Board
Eunice’s Notebook
The Tater-Top Hotdish, Properly Understood
Eunice’s kitchen column this week defends the tater-top hotdish against cornflakes, potato chips, and what one correspondent called “a deconstructed topping.”
Acceptable add-ins: onion, green beans, mushroom soup, pepper. Unacceptable: ambition.
The rhubarb article continues to draw mail, much of it sticky. Please let bars cool before delivery to the office.
Personals & Thanks
From the Kitchen Table
- Happy birthday to Mrs. Gibbons, who still has the best handwriting on church envelopes.
- Thank you to the Daybreak staff for handling the bear matter with dignity and a bungee cord.
Living · Stars Over the Chain
The Week in the Stars
As read by Sigrid Pelto, who has lived in Misquah her whole life — but for college, and the summer of 1995, when she and the girls did Europe on a rail pass and a woman in a Florence market took her hand and told her she had the gift. She reads from the end of her dock on Loon Lake.
Jupiter’s sitting pretty this week, and Jupiter makes things bigger — the speeches at graduation, the fish stories at Tim’s, all of it. The Sun’s almost into Cancer, so the year’s about to tip toward warm. Watch the evening light. That’s when I do most of my reading, out on the dock.
Aries
Mars is up, and so is the old urge to march down to City Hall about the stop sign. I understand it, truly. But that corner’s waited since 1957, and it can outwait your blood pressure. Save your fire for a fight the sky can actually win this week.
Taurus
There’s a bear in the Daybreak dumpster, working at what isn’t his — which, between us, is a little how you’ve been with other people’s business. Tend your own bins first. You’ve enough on your plate; let the café manage its bear, and you manage your own fences.
Gemini
Graduation week, and the ones you watched grow up are going. Use your gift — be the one who finds the right words at the line. They’ll carry what you say further than you’ll ever know. That’s what words are for; it’s the best thing your sign does.
Cancer
The Sun’s nearly to your door, the walleye bite turns honest come evening, and so do you. Save the real talk for dusk this week, out on the water if you can. The hard things come easier in low light — your sign always knew that.
Leo
Your hotdish is going to get talked about, and Jupiter’s only making the praise bigger. Take the compliments, dodge the recipe question, and guard that tater-tot ratio with your life. Some folks leave behind monuments; yours is crumb-topped, and just as good.
Virgo
That ‘wolves’ tier at the library has finally met its match in a fourth-grader, and you know the type — because you were the type, and maybe still are. Pace yourself this week. Or don’t, and read the whole shelf. I’d never scold a kindred spirit for that.
Libra
The subcommittee wants a fourth, and your name keeps coming up. Weigh it honestly, then say no honestly. Balance includes the right to sit one out — the scales don’t have to carry every single thing folks set on them.
Scorpio
The bear’s thinking it over, and so are you, and neither of you ought to act on Thursday’s impulse. Sleep on it. The dumpster will still be there Friday, and so will the wanting. The strongest want is the one you decide, just this once, not to feed.
Sagittarius
Thirty-eight graduates and one open road, and it’ll put you in mind of your own leaving. Tell a senior it gets bigger out there — because it does. Then tell them the truer thing: the wanting to come home gets bigger too. I learned that one the hard way, far from here.
Capricorn
You’ll quietly fix the very thing the subcommittee is forming a subcommittee to study — no hearing, no minutes, just done. The stars like your way of it. While the town debates how to build, you’ve already set the footing. You always do.
Aquarius
The council can debate a fourth stop sign all it likes; you’ve privately decided three is plenty, and you’re right. You usually are. It rarely helps and rarely changes the vote — be right anyway. Somebody has to keep the record honest.
Pisces
It’s a season of endings — graduations, goodbyes, the last cold mornings off the water. Let them land soft. The Sun’s about to cross into the warm, and the lake’s finally up to temperature, so go put your feet in. It helps more than you’d think. Doctor’s orders, near enough.
On Your Big Three. People ask me to explain the three big pieces, so here it is the way I learned it. Your Sun is who you are at the Daybreak counter, where everyone can see you. Your Moon is who you are at two in the morning, when the wind comes up off the lake and you can’t sleep. And your Rising is who the new pastor thinks you are, before he knows any better. I read all three by appointment, Tuesdays, out at the end of my dock — weather and coffee permitting. Bring your birth time if you’ve got it. Bring a thermos if you don’t.