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Adapting to disaster

You can hardly watch the news or read a newspaper without learning about yet another disaster. It almost seems normal that something terrible is happening to someone somewhere. People losing their lives, far-ranging damage, and consequent hardship are the fruit of disaster. The prolonged psychological impact of these experiences cannot be overstated. One of the things that gets us through a disastrous experience is called Resilience. Simply put, resilience is a person’s ability to adjust to, adapt to, and recover from, exposure to a difficult or even terrible situation. Another way ...

Wine, whiskey and music

It’s always interesting to notice how things come together. Many of us enjoy a good old PB&J, right? In case you don’t recognize those letters, they stand for peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Of course, you would retort, everyone knows what PB&J stands for, dumbo! And to press on, everyone enjoys a nice piece of apple pie with ice cream, correct? Or, how about a plate of buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup with scrambled eggs and sausage? There are so many food items that tastefully pair together, but don’t forget to look around you, too! Notice all of life’s opportunities ...

A little extra

Looking at the weather graph and confirming things with the radar, I had about two hours after lunch to sneak out for a grouse hunt before the weekend’s rains returned. Judging by the orange and red on the doppler, I’d have to hustle up and back to a well-known spot north of town just to get a quick hike in and to see how things were since I was up there scouting around in early August. Upon arrival, I was dismayed to see the rolling hills of grass matted and mowed down, and the stands of sweet clover clipped and broken as some late season grazing had taken place since my late ...

Making a board

I recently decided to expand my woodworking skill set by making a board. It turns out that this is much more difficult than it sounds. Yes, I could have simply gone to a lumberyard and purchased some wood. Or I could have wandered into a home improvement megastore where I likely would have gotten lost and forced live off the land by swilling sports drinks and chewing on leather tool belts. But buying a board would have been the easy, wimpy way of doing things. This might be due to my Norwegian heritage, but I believe that anything worth doing is worth doing the hard way. That’s why ...

Taking care of some creaky parts

“You gotta take care of stull.” Long ago, my father Sylvester told me that. That admonition still sits in the back of my mind. Dad was referring to taking care of the myriad machines involved with working the farm. Routine maintenance of everything from the gutter cleaner to the tillage tractor is required. It also means being ever vigilant, on guard for loose chains and squeaky bearings. Recently I’ve been taking care of stuff. Every few years, my 70-year-old Farmall 400 and 60-year-old IH 560 get a once over from the tractor doctors at Miller Sellner Implement. Both ...

Printing plant tour highlights modern technology

I had an interesting experience this week, one that showed how much the world has changed because of technology. I took part in an Adult Community Center tour of the Henle Printing plant at its new location in Marshall’s industrial park. Owner Charlie Stark and Production Manager Marc Klaith introduced the group to the set of machines that produce a massive amount of printed materials. They also gave a demonstration. They printed off 800 programs for the Marshall Tiger football season on a machine that automatically puts pages in order and staples them. Henle’s has only one ...