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Stacking up rocks or knocking them down

Community Voices

I walk or jog on Sleepy Eye’s Lake Trail. The trail has been a blessing. I used to run on the shoulder of Highway 14. That has become insanely busy. I was afraid of getting sucked into the wake of a semi-truck and ending up in Brookings. I mostly go on the quieter west side of the trail. In part of that, there is a field on one side and woods on the other. In the trees, there is a rock pile. There are rock piles all across the Corn Belt. Some of these are as old as when the first settlers came and began the work of turning prairie into cropland. The one we have in our grove is for ...

City budgeting factors provide for a comprehensive process

Community Voices

The city of Marshall has recently presented to Council a draft budget and a preliminary property tax levy amount. All cities are required to prepare and adopt an annual levy and budget. By law, in Minnesota, the fiscal year of a city and all its funds must be the calendar year. The budget sets out a council’s yearly plan to maintain, change, add or drop services and activities. For cities, a budget is one year of estimated money coming in (revenue) and money going out (expenditures). Property taxes are the largest source of revenue for cities. Thus, through this budgeting process ...

America must wake up

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: There was a time when truth mattered. When leadership meant humility, and public service demanded accountability. I remember that America — the one that didn’t tolerate Watergate, that investigated swiftly, wrote books, made films, and ultimately saw a president resign. Richard Nixon, for all his flaws, put country above self. Today, I fear we’ve lost that compass. The MAGA movement has become a cult of personality. It demands loyalty over logic, spectacle over substance. It bends law, culture, and education through propaganda and grievance. I’ve seen this ...

Ready for the autumn ahead

Local Columns

In my final race of the summer season, the last of the week’s cloud cover hung overhead as the antsy crowd of runners counted down the last ten seconds with the announcer and the half marathon began. More than five inches of rain had fallen in the preceding seven days, but the gray ceiling above held off on the event, and I found myself cruising at a pace I’d yet to touch all season. By the time three miles remained, I knew a personal best was possible based on the estimated pace from my watch, and as I crossed the finish line at just a hair over 100 minutes. With finisher medal in ...

How does food attract us?

Community Voices

What is it about food that makes us want to eat it? What circuits are triggered when we look at the foods we like? How do the sensory properties of food influence our choices of what to eat? There are no simple answers for this complex function. What follows is just a piece of the mechanism. There are different models, each with its own perspective. The different models are due to the complexity of the food attraction mechanism. A traditional way to explain food attraction is called the Hedonic model. The suggestion here is that food is associated with pleasure. Anything that ...

A meaningful walk

Local Columns

What is a meaningful walk to you? There are many ingredients that make such a walk for us, right? Those ingredients include a first walk, a last walk, a walk with someone special, a solitary walk and a walk for a cause. If you are a parent, you know what’s it’s like to see your child take their first step alone leading to their first and future walks. From personal experience, when that wee child begins to walk and you release your supporting/guiding hand, as a parent you are quite nervous. You don’t want your child to fall, but that first walk must be done. When completed, we ...