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Country school kids – Lois Paine Widmark – Lake Benton Public School

We have been learning about Ivanhoe’s Lois Paine Widmark and her early life in western South Dakota; her WWII service with the WAVES; her college, marriage, farm, and family life; and her short career as an educator at the Arco Public School. She was working to complete her degree in the summer of 1967 when another school fulfilled her dream of being a kindergarten teacher. “I got my job at Lake Benton when Arco closed. Miss Donahue (the kindergarten teacher) was coming back, but she found out she had cancer and at the last minute they needed a teacher. So, Arnold took me down [to ...

Is 4% rule right retirement income strategy for you?

Planning for lasting retirement income requires a thoughtful strategy, especially with factors like longevity, market volatility and evolving lifestyle needs in play. As retirement approaches, one of the most common questions people face is: “How much can I safely withdraw from my savings each year?” For decades, the 4% rule has served as a widely accepted guideline. The premise is straightforward: withdraw 4% of your total savings in the first year of retirement, then adjust that amount annually for inflation. While the 4% rule offers a straightforward framework, it doesn’t ...

New year, new you? How about new year, more kindness

Google what Americans’ top resolutions are for 2026, and you’ll find all the usual suspects at the top of the list: lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier and save more money. I skimmed a dozen articles from around the country and not one of the lists listed “be kinder” though, which I find a shame. Also not on the list, be more neighborly, be more generous, volunteer more or be more civically engaged. It seems that even in our resolutions that our thoughts turn only inwards, not outwards toward our fellow man. Friends, if not now, when? Because there are millions ...

Minnesota’s future being priced away — and next generation sees it firsthand

I am part of a generation that wants to farm here, build businesses here, and raise families here. But more and more, Minnesota is making that harder, not because we lack innovation or work ethic, but because failed DFL state leadership continues to ignore the basic costs of doing business. The warning signs are already clear. According to the Minnesota Chamber’s most recent Business Benchmarks report, from 2019 to 2024 Minnesota ranked 38th in GDP growth, 40th in labor force growth, and 41st in net domestic migration. For young people deciding where to plant roots, those numbers ...

Celebrate!

Happy New Year! It’s time to celebrate! Perhaps we should celebrate not only the beginning of a New Year, but, also, the many other daily occasions that we take for granted. Therefore, let’s all pause, take a breath, relax a bit and begin the New Year noticing all the people, places and things that surround us. Oh, did we have a terrific holiday family gathering! For some of us, such family times happen frequently during the year, and, for some of us, the family coming together times are less frequent. However, there is joy in every reunion and we must celebrate those precious ...

The kayak mystery

Cleaning out an old family farmhouse is an exercise in conundrums. As you sift through all the stuff, you have to constantly ask yourself, “keep or crap?” Many of the decisions are easy. It’s unlikely that anyone will want a yellowed feed store calendar from 2013. Ditto for the rubber over boots that have more holes than a standard slice of Swiss cheese. But other things aren’t quite so easy to categorize. Back in the corner of a dresser drawer, I stumbled across a tattered paperback book that delineated, in excruciating detail, In the lineage of the Ruen family. I was ...