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Risk of stroke means we all must BE FAST

You can save a life in just a few seconds, by being ready to respond if a stroke occurs. Nearly 800,000 Americans experience stroke each year. Strokes cause 140,000 deaths each year and are a leading cause of serious long-term disability. May is National Stroke Awareness Month. Act quickly if you notice the signs of stroke, which you can remember with the acronym BE FAST: B – Sudden BALANCE loss E – Sudden EYESIGHT loss F – FACE drooping A – ARM weakness S – SPEECH difficulty T – TIME to call 911 When you see these signs, get to your local emergency room ...

Mental Health Awareness Month: an important occasion that everyone should like

May is the month is which we observe mental health awareness, an issue that has strong personal resonance with me. I’ve had two instances in my life when I suffered from delusional thoughts. One occurred in 2004 when I had to make a decision about giving up my job and going to graduate school. The other happened in 2019 when I was dealing with my dad’s death. They were serious. In 2004 I had wild thoughts about going broke and becoming homeless. In 2019 I wandered away from my home, looking for my dad. I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing for fear that they’d think I was ...

A purse emergency

My wife recently had a purse emergency. We were staying at a hotel in a distant city when she noticed that her current purse was, as she put it, “shot.” I examined the thing and told her that that it seemed perfectly functional to me. “Men!” she exclaimed. “They don’t notice anything unless it involves a souped-up V-8 engine or a curvy figure!” After all these years of marriage, I’ve learned that it’s best not to argue with my wife. Especially when she’s right. She pointed at a particular spot on her purse. “See?” she asked, “It’s falling apart! My ...

Supporting meat processors

Can ambitious rural Minnesotans bring in new people to revitalize the tradition of local butcher shops and meat processing lockers in Minnesota? Judging from the experience new local meat processors shared at a Minnesota Farmers Union Bottleneck Project workshop, the answer is a qualified yes. A 2022 report, Meat Processing Bottlenecks, found that 33 percent of existing meat processors and meat lockers are without a fully developed succession plan. For the small to mid-sized livestock farmers who rely on these businesses, losing one-third of the state’s butcher shops and meat ...

In Minnesota, statistical gloom amid the hope of a progressive-led boom

There is a lot of disagreement right now on the state of our state. A few weeks ago, in his State of the State address, Gov. Tim Walz depicted Minnesota as a progressive utopia that should be an example for all of America. On the other hand, some on the right describe the state as something approaching a barren hellscape (a description some of us have reserved for Wisconsin (in jest of course)). The truth is that, although Minnesota is not a scene out of Dante’s “Inferno,” the North Star State is in serious decline. From the economy, to education, to crime, to folks relocating ...

A common enemy: does the United States need one?

We had an interesting discussion one day this spring in my Southwest Minnesota State University Gold College class on the U.S. Constitution. One of the class members made a comment that what the United States maybe needs is a common enemy, an enemy to everyone. It would be the same as Germany and Japan in World War II or the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It lead to an interesting dialogue. Instructor Steve Frederickson and class members made comments that tied in directly with the title of the class. We saw that there were two different questions that could be asked. One is whether ...