Call us wild and crazy, but my wife and I opted to ring in the new year by spending it with our toddler grandson and his parents, who live in Kansas City. We got a late start on the six-hour journey, so we decided to break it up by spending a night in a hotel at the halfway point. This option ...

Each year, it’s important that you and all members of your family schedule an annual preventive health visit. You may know this as a yearly checkup, physical exam, well-woman exam, well-child visit, and so on. It’s that one chance each year to check in with your primary care provider, even ...

Someone recently challenged me to come up with some New Year’s resolutions. I have a couple of problems with that particular idea. First of all, how can you resolve to become a better person when you’re already so good that there’s nearly no room for improvement? If you are, as Mary ...

Just in time for Christmas, I looked like a freak. How festive. I came home from town, and wife Pam made a face at me. “What’s wrong with your eye?” Nothing that I knew about till I looked in the mirror. My left eye was red where white was supposed to be. It was what your teenager would ...

This Yuletide season has seemed a bit peculiar for my wife and me. Our impression that this was an off-kilter Christmas was mainly due to a summer and fall that passed in a blur of chemotherapy and radiation treatments and doctor’s appointments to treat my tonsil cancer. We were in ...

Nationally, nearly every local area in the U.S. raises revenue through property taxes, and these taxes represent the largest tax revenue source in 94 percent of localities. Property taxes are also the dominant tax revenue source for local governments here in Minnesota, generating more than any ...