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Continue season of giving by donating blood

Community Voices

Along with being the month when we make resolutions or start a new diet or exercise plan, January is also the month to raise awareness about the urgent need for blood donations. Donating blood is a simple and relatively painless way to do something amazing: save lives. January is National Blood Donor Month, established to combat winter blood shortages by honoring existing donors and encouraging new ones, while highlighting the critical need for blood for surgeries, trauma and chronic illnesses like cancer. January is often the month when blood shortages happen. Otherwise regular ...

Country school kids – Lois Paine Widmark – Lake Benton Public School

Community Voices

We have been learning about Ivanhoe’s Lois Paine Widmark and her early life in western South Dakota; her WWII service with the WAVES; her college, marriage, farm, and family life; and her short career as an educator at the Arco Public School. She was working to complete her degree in the summer of 1967 when another school fulfilled her dream of being a kindergarten teacher. “I got my job at Lake Benton when Arco closed. Miss Donahue (the kindergarten teacher) was coming back, but she found out she had cancer and at the last minute they needed a teacher. So, Arnold took me down [to ...

New year, new you? How about new year, more kindness

Community Voices

Google what Americans’ top resolutions are for 2026, and you’ll find all the usual suspects at the top of the list: lose weight, exercise more, eat healthier and save more money. I skimmed a dozen articles from around the country and not one of the lists listed “be kinder” though, which I find a shame. Also not on the list, be more neighborly, be more generous, volunteer more or be more civically engaged. It seems that even in our resolutions that our thoughts turn only inwards, not outwards toward our fellow man. Friends, if not now, when? Because there are millions ...

Trump putting Trump family first

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: As a 24-year-old Naval petty officer serving as a DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) courier in the Pentagon, I was often required to be into brief contact with some of the individuals in appointed positions from the private sector. In dealing with an individual on a casual basis on one occasion shortly before my discharge, I recall a conversation in which this person, David Packard, the deputy secretary of defense, was bemoaning the fact that he would have to forfeit some very sizable ($100,000 or more) gains in the stock market from the preceding day due to a conflict ...

Trump will never give up the throne

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: I never thought I would agree with anything conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote, but then I never thought an egomaniac would be elected president of the United States. Thomas has called Trump a narcissist among other things, particularly now that Trump has had the audacity to finagle getting the JF Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts renamed after him, henceforth, the Trump Kennedy Center. Instead of naming buildings, possibly football stadiums and Mount Rushmore, after himself, bombing Nigeria and Venezuelan fishing boats, engaging in a direct ...

Minnesota’s future being priced away — and next generation sees it firsthand

Community Voices

I am part of a generation that wants to farm here, build businesses here, and raise families here. But more and more, Minnesota is making that harder, not because we lack innovation or work ethic, but because failed DFL state leadership continues to ignore the basic costs of doing business. The warning signs are already clear. According to the Minnesota Chamber’s most recent Business Benchmarks report, from 2019 to 2024 Minnesota ranked 38th in GDP growth, 40th in labor force growth, and 41st in net domestic migration. For young people deciding where to plant roots, those numbers ...