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Love, in-love or both

Just about everyone | know has told me that love was the reason they married their spouse. Whether you are married or divorced, love was in there somewhere. Since love is the most often stated reason for marriage, it would be good to know what that is. What follows is what psychologists generally have said that love is all about. One way that you might characterize the stages in a relationship is in three steps. First comes the Romantic stage. In this stage, we put our best foot forward and do everything we can to ensure that the other person wants to keep seeing us. The second ...

Going antiquing

My wife and I recently took a business trip to St. Cloud. She suggested that we leave early so that we could go antiquing. I learned long ago that “antiquing” is a code word for “shopping.” I used to think that “antiquing” meant making something new appear to be old. This is the opposite of what I’ve always been trying to accomplish. I’ve forever been striving to make my worn old farm equipment, cars, and face look like they are nearly new. But there’s only so much that can be done to conceal rust and wrinkles. As we motored along, we encountered a mercantile outlet ...

I need my polka fix

I spend an ungodly amount of time in a tractor cab during the fall. Outside of sleeping, eating at odd intervals, and doing maintenance, my life is lived in a cab. The tractor radio is my steady companion. Every spring and fall, I spend a lot more time listening to the radio than Pam. The rest of the year, I listen to my wife because that’s what a successful husband does. I listen to a lot of news. (Spoiler alert, it’s bad.) Weather reports are must-listen radio when everything you do depends on weather. I follow the markets. Following the markets means following the mind of ...

Still striving for peace and freedom

I noticed this week that Marshall’s Adult Community Center sponsored a presentation about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It involved a tense two weeks when the world came close to nuclear war. The missile crisis was a major event in a much longer situation known as the Cold War, which lasted for more than 40 years. It began in the late 1940s, when the Soviet Union had developed the atomic bomb and when it prevented Eastern Europeans from moving to the West. It was still in full swing when I was a child in the 1970s. I remember being part of civil defense drills at Holy ...

Local news important for civic engagement and connecting community

This past month of October, National Newspaper Week was sponsored by the Newspaper Association Managers (NAM) to promote the vital role newspapers play in informing, empowering, and uniting our communities. Their theme this year was the importance of local journalism. According to NAM, local journalism brings stories to light that national outlets often overlook school board decisions, city council debates, neighborhood events, and local heroes. City of Marshall leadership has taken some time to discuss the importance of communications and noted the importance of local news ...

Return back to the basic principles

Once upon a time, there was a country called the United States of America founded upon the basic principles of freedom, liberty and prosperity. Because of these principles, granted to each of us by our creator, the founders, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others, met in Philadelphia in May 25 thru September 17, 1878, to revise the Articles of Confederation, however, after much debate they agreed rather than revising the Articles to abolish them and create a new frame of government. On June 21, 1788, the Constitution along with the first 10 Amendments, known ...