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Smoke free bars reflect changes in the public mindset

If you’re considering how much society has changed in the past few years, one of the things to talk about is smoke free bars. I remember when smoke in bars used to hover around the ceiling in a dense haze. I remember when many people didn’t want to wear their nicest clothes into bars because of the smoke. Smoke free bars were just starting to be talked about in the 1990s when I worked as a full-time reporter. They were a controversial idea back then. If for some odd reason I’d wanted to make almost everybody mad, writing a column advocating smoke free bars would have been a way ...

Factors contributing to successful marriage

Over the years I have seen both good and bad marriages. What follows is a psychologist’s opinion as to a few of the factors that contribute to a successful, mutually satisfying, healthy marriage. There certainly are more factors that could be listed here, but what follows are a few that have clearly stood out in my work with couples. This is not an exhaustive list. First, they have to be friends, best friends. They would prefer to do things with the other person more than just about anyone else. It is the pleasure of their company. What do friends and successful couples do? They do ...

Water softener blues

One of the first things my wife and I did when we moved into our farmhouse more than four decades ago was dig a well. Our house, which was built by my grandparents in the early 1960s, drew its water from a cistern. This was good and bad. It was good because the cistern was supplied by naturally soft rainwater from the house’s roof; it was bad because no rain meant no rainwater. And birds, who aren’t known for their fastidious bathroom habits, often roosted on the roof. We didn’t personally dig our well, of course. That would have involved approximately as much manual labor as ...

Heart Month awareness: You may not realize your risk

Heart disease has been the number 1 killer in America for a century. Nearly half of all people have some type of cardiovascular disease, yet 38% don’t even realize they have it, according to the American Heart Association. That makes American Heart Month each February an important time of awareness. Not just to wear red, but to think about your own heart health and prevention. Prevention begins at your yearly checkup with your primary care provider. At this appointment, your provider will note important measures that can indicate possible cardiovascular disease or higher risk, ...

Sleep and memory

Just about everyone has heard the phrase ‘sleep on it’. Sleep is important in many ways. What follows is one of those very important ways. Sleep is incredibly important for memory and learning. Think about the immense amount of information that we acquire over a lifetime, or even in a day. Somehow we find a way to remember a large part of that information. When we first take in information much of it is forgotten unless there is some way to move it from short-term memory into long-term memory. The movement of information from short-term memory into long-term memory is called ...

The winter of Sam

The Facebook photo caption read something like: “You think we’re having a winter? This is what a real winter looks like! Photo was taken in 1979.” The picture was of a bulldozer trying to clear snow from some railroad tracks. I say “trying” because the situation looked hopeless. Towering drifts on both sides of the tracks made the dozer look like a toy. The snowbanks nearly reached the tops of the trackside utility poles. The winter of ’79 is burned into my memory for a couple of reasons. First is that it’s among the coldest and snowiest winters I’ve ever endured. ...