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Community Voices

How home care and hospice benefits people and communities

All the varied levels of health care help ensure that patients are in the best setting for their condition and recovery. In many cases, that setting is home — which is exactly where the majority of patients want to be. Did you know that the average length of stay in a hospital has decreased from 21 days in the 1960s to around five today? Medical advancements, like minimally invasive surgery, and the transition of more services from inpatient to outpatient are key reasons behind that shift. Inpatient hospital care is the most expensive setting. Also, home health has benefits that ...

The feasting season

The collective groan arising from bathroom scales across this great land of ours signals that it’s the feasting season once again. This season kicks off with Thanksgiving, although one could argue that it actually begins with Halloween. Or Labor Day, or the Fourth of July, or Memorial Day, or Easter, or Valentine’s Day, or the Superbowl, or New Year’s Eve. Let’s face it, we’ll latch onto any excuse to feast, including Arbor Day. My family’s traditional cold weather feasts traditionally involved turkey. I have dozens of cousins, so several animals were needed to feed ...

Entering a new world with robots and AI

My heart sank a little when I heard. We knew it was coming. Baseball will be little less human and a little more mechanical. I’m talking about Major League Baseball adopting the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System for next season. Teams will be allowed to challenge a ball-strike call two times in a game. The result will be shown on the video scoreboard, and the game will move on with the correct call. The ABS Challenge System has been used in the Minor Leagues for a couple of years. “Hawkeye” technology uses radar to create a perfect strike zone for each hitter. ...

Marshall is a great retirement destination for senior citizens

One of the most important decisions made by senior citizens involves choosing a community as a place to retire. Sometimes it comes down to a choice between urban and rural. Larger cities have more medical facilities and more cultural activities. The down side is that they can seem overwhelmingly big for someone who’s aging, who’s becoming less active. When someone chooses Marshall, they get a combination of city and country. They get the best of both worlds. We have excellent housing options for seniors. They have three great congregate choices with Boulder Estates, Hill Street ...

Chicago brings back romance

My wife and I couldn’t go to Chicago, so Chicago came to us. I’m talking about the iconic rock band, not the city. In this case “iconic” can be interpreted as “old enough to involve carbon dating.” The band Chicago Transit Authority was formed in 1967, the year I turned 10. That means I was 13 their romantic tune “Colour My World” hit the airwaves. Thirteen is a formative time in any young man’s life, but especially so for a gawky, gangly pimple-faced prairie dairy farm kid who’s struggling to figure out what, exactly, that romance stuff is. Chicago Transit ...

Final Harvest shows that violent crimes should be remembered

This fall I became reacquainted with the most famous murder case in local history, the 1983 murders of two Ruthton bankers. I reread the book Final Harvest by Andrew Malcolm. I wanted to read it again after 40 years because of how I remember hearing about events as they transpired. Final Harvest goes into considerable detail about farmer Jim Jenkins and his son, Steve. Malcolm also discusses the lives of the victims, describes what happened at the former Jenkins farm site, and offers a step by step account of the 1984 murder trial at the Lincoln County Courthouse in Ivanhoe. At the ...