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Eagle Cafe fire kindles memories of local eating places

A symbol of my family’s history was severely damaged by a fire this spring. The building that housed Ivanhoe’s former Eagle Cafe caught fire in April in a midnight blaze. Fire departments from as far away as Marshall and Canby responded to the Ivanhoe Fire Department’s call for assistance. Much of the roof collapsed and part of the second floor had extensive damage. The owner published a full damage assessment report in the Ivanhoe Times, and has pledged to rebuild. I hope he’s successful. I hope the building can once again become a valuable part of the Ivanhoe ...

The relapse problem

Anyone who works in a helping profession will deal with success that often is followed by the person being helped sliding back into his or her old ways. The setback then needs to be addressed and dealt with. Their self-defeating behaviors have to stop if success is to be maintained When a person initially stops the problem behavior for a brief period of time we say that the person is in remission. Remission is an initial period during which there is no recurrence of the problem behavior. Relapse, however, is any return or recurrence of the problem behavior. A slip is different. A ...

Dairy Month delights

Legend has it that an urban congressman decided to visit a dairy farm. “How often do you milk your cows?” asked the congressman. “Twice a day,” replied the dairyman. “So, ten times a week,” said the congressman. “No, twice a day.” “That’s what I said. There are five days in a week, so that’s ten times a week.” “No, twice a day,” insisted the dairyman. The discussion continued in this vein for some minutes. Shaking his head, the dairyman finally turned to his wife and quipped, “Good news, Helen. It sounds like the ...

Mourning and grief

There was a time when you came into existence, and there is a time when you will exist no more. Like the saying goes, no one gets out of this life alive. Unfortunately, that includes the people we like and love. Encounters with death are inescapable. The longer we live, the fewer people with whom we have been close. Some people would call that the cycle of life. When a person with whom we have been close dies, we enter a state of grief, mourning, and bereavement. To really understand what grief is about, you have to remember how intimately interwoven your life is with the people ...

Physical therapy graduation: it fits with the season

For the first time in almost 20 years, I found out what it’s like to again be a graduate. I completed two months of physical therapy at Avera Therapy after my hip surgery. The fact that it coincided with high school and college events made me think of how any graduation is a special time. A physical therapy graduation might sound different from an academic one. In reality, however, they have some important similarities. For one thing there’s a sense of accomplishment. After I had surgery I was dependent on my walker. I had to half step my way up and down stairs. I rode the ...

Coping with problems and life

Life has its ups and downs, good and bad, right and wrong. How would you know good days if it wasn’t for the bad ones? How would you learn what not to do if you didn’t make mistakes? Since that is the way life seems to be, how do we handle the bad times? Those bad times cause stress. Stress is triggered when something occurs that demands that you do something about it. The things that trigger stress are called stressors. To survive, we have to learn to cope with those stressors, deal with them effectively, and overcome them. There are any number of stressors with which ...