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Country School Kids – Bonnie Jean Davis – Beginning on a Lynd farm

Bonnie Jean (Madden) Davis was born in July 1935 in the old, Dr. Ford hospital on South 4th Street in Marshall, but her story begins on a farm in rural Lynd. Her life journey brought her back to Marshall and a career teaching kindergarten in the Marshall Public Schools. Bonnie identified ...

Stocking up on fun


For those of us on the prairie, stocked trout provide perhaps the best introduction to fishing for the species. Once my brother and I, along with a select number of friends, had learned of a population of the salmonids that had flown under the radar stocked in a lake near my hometown, I was ...

Why pay the price?

How would you handle the following situation? I wanted to buy a new pair of hiking boots, and went to a local shoe store. Walking through the store, I saw a pair of boots costing $200, and a similar pair costing $80. Both pairs looked very sturdy and felt comfortable. Why the difference in price? Was there some hidden item in either boot or was the quality of the boots the reason for the price difference? Why pay the higher price? The rest of the story will soon be revealed. Have you wondered why you played a sport or a musical instrument in school? Well, I played basketball, but ...

Timeless icons

I’ve discovered that some things age better than others. Bourbon and cheese are examples of things that improve with time while bread and my short-term memory have fleeting … um, what are the words? Oh, yeah! Expiration dates. Many things are deemed useless once they attain a certain ...

Getting our priorities straight

As a parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about our family’s budget. Do we take a spring break trip, or contribute to the kids’ college fund? Do we eat out less to offset rising health insurance premiums? Every day, we weigh wants against needs and make choices based on what really matters. We ought to do the same thing at the Legislature when we’re spending taxpayer money. But right now, priorities are way out of whack. When it’s your own paycheck, the decisions are clear. When it’s public dollars, things get blurry and sometimes warped. Take the $40 million ...

Lessons learned from Metro Surge should never be forgotten

After an anxious winter, Minnesota’s Operation Metro Surge has mostly turned into yesterday’s news. Things have quieted down in the Twin Cities. No major new surges have been launched in other places. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a division of the Department of Homeland ...