“Unusual weather we’re having, ain’t it?” – the Cowardly Lion, upon awakening to a snowstorm after a poppy party in the docudrama “The Wizard of Oz.” We denizens of the prairie know that you don’t have to go somewhere over the rainbow to enjoy — or endure, depending on your ...
Everyone knows that we need sleep. If we do not get enough sleep, we also know that it can have a variety of negative consequences. The same may be said of getting too much sleep. I suppose that. Too much, or too little, of anything can have consequences. One word for too little sleep is insomnia, while one word for too much sleep is hypersomnia. Either one can strongly impact your mood. What is mood? One mood analogy is that feelings like anxiety and depression are like the current weather. Mood is more like the climate. Mood is what psychologists call an affective state. ...
Pam and I have a nice house. It’s one of those old farmhouses that’s been remodeled a hundred different ways. Since the kids left, it’s just Pam and me. And a few thousands of ladybugs. Several times a day, I go around the house sweeping ladybugs into a dustpan and tossing them outside. Depending on the time of day, they gather around different windows. The siege of ladybugs is worse in the country. Townie friends report that some of the little buggers make it to the big city. If you don’t have them, be thankful for avoiding this pestilence. In the fall, they are ...
I had an interesting experience this week on Monday morning, one that involved a wide panorama of Midwestern history. I was part of a bus tour group that went to the Gold Star Military Museum at Camp Dodge west of Des Moines, Iowa. The stop was the last segment of a three-day mystery tour trip to Des Moines, one that also included a Saturday night musical and a Sunday visit to a downtown arts center. The museum is one of the best I’ve ever seen. It tells the complete story of Iowa’s role in our nation’s wars, from frontier days to Afghanistan. The exhibit hall starts with ...
Eric Miller with Suite Liv’n sent me an email a couple weeks ago inviting the Independent to cover a community outreach event involving apartment residents. The email stated that volunteers would be gathering to paint small flower pots and then add the soil and seeds. The pots were ...
Minnesota’s Republican members of Congress — Pete Stauber, Brad Finstad, Michelle Fischbach, and Tom Emmer — supported H.J. Res. 140, overturning protections for over 234,000 acres just outside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCA) in Minnesota, thereby opening the door to potential copper-nickel sulfide mining next to the BWCA. As a registered Republican I am disgusted by their choice to support a foreign mining company rather than to protect Minnesota’s most pristine natural environment. The H.J. Res. 140 decision passed both houses of Congress along party lines ...
