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Still striving for peace and freedom

I noticed this week that Marshall’s Adult Community Center sponsored a presentation about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It involved a tense two weeks when the world came close to nuclear war. The missile crisis was a major event in a much longer situation known as the Cold War, which lasted for more than 40 years. It began in the late 1940s, when the Soviet Union had developed the atomic bomb and when it prevented Eastern Europeans from moving to the West. It was still in full swing when I was a child in the 1970s. I remember being part of civil defense drills at Holy ...

On the Porch

Joseph Fifield served in the War of 1812. He is buried at the Russell Cemetery in Lyon County. The following information is from a May 26, 1979, article in the Marshall Independent about historian Arthur Louis Finnell’s search on information regarding Joseph Fifield. It was during his research that Finnell was able to obtain a copy of Fifield’s pension papers from the National Archives in Washington D.C. “What brought Fifield from New Hampshire to Minnesota? Was he 14, 15, 16 years old, merely a boy, when he served in the War of 1812? Those questions are proving difficult to ...

Local news important for civic engagement and connecting community

This past month of October, National Newspaper Week was sponsored by the Newspaper Association Managers (NAM) to promote the vital role newspapers play in informing, empowering, and uniting our communities. Their theme this year was the importance of local journalism. According to NAM, local journalism brings stories to light that national outlets often overlook school board decisions, city council debates, neighborhood events, and local heroes. City of Marshall leadership has taken some time to discuss the importance of communications and noted the importance of local news ...

Return back to the basic principles

Once upon a time, there was a country called the United States of America founded upon the basic principles of freedom, liberty and prosperity. Because of these principles, granted to each of us by our creator, the founders, George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others, met in Philadelphia in May 25 thru September 17, 1878, to revise the Articles of Confederation, however, after much debate they agreed rather than revising the Articles to abolish them and create a new frame of government. On June 21, 1788, the Constitution along with the first 10 Amendments, known ...

Farmers facing crisis of uncertainty — reversing tariffs only way to end it

Right now, rural America is facing a crisis of uncertainty. In Minnesota and across the country, farmers are having trouble making ends meet amid low commodity prices and increasing costs, and farm financial conditions are deteriorating. Farmer loan repayment rates continue to decline in Minnesota and across the Midwest, and small farm bankruptcies have reached a five-year high. Why? Our farmers can’t offset the toll the administration’s tariffs are taking on the rural economy. As I visited family farmers across western and southern Minnesota last month they told me just ...

Long retrieves

There must have been just the right number of pellets held tight enough in the yellow 20-gauge shell to connect with the late-flushing rooster in the group of more than a dozen tucked into the grass surrounded by the golden corn fields still waiting to be harvested. The bird fluttered and toppled a good distance away to my right as the remainder of the hens and roosters scattered to my left. I pegged a gray clump of grass a few yards in front of the crash-landing site and was just about to call my lab, Ole, over to begin the search after his switchbacking excitement of putting up the ...