As many of you have heard, with my wife and I’s plan to move to Florida, July will be my last month with the Benton County News and the company that owns the paper, Star Publications. 

Legislators who, by nature, seek quick remedies for possibly menacing, sensitive problems insist the acting out behavior of youngsters enrolled in public schools is too harshly dealt with. 

Mahamta Gandhi said “An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.” Interpersonal conflict happens. In fact, harassment complaints consistently rank in the top five most reported crimes in Benton County. 

I often tell my wife that in politics, – and society at large – when the pendulum swings one way, the result is that it usually swings way too far in the other direction in reaction. It is like Newton’s third law of motion: For every action or force in nature, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Crop farmers’ dependency on favorable weather is so very visible in this overheated, sparse moisture period. 

Foley Public Schools has collectively appreciated the community support as we support students in their educational journey through our pre-K-12 system. 

When I was in high school, believe it or not, I was a decent athlete. I have always had pretty good hand-eye coordination, and I was lucky to have good genetics in relation to my height and weight. Sports came easy to me, and that was fortunate because academics, social situations and general responsibility did not. 

Backing up to take another look at decades long buried, we admit that, if we recall celebrating Decoration Day, we’re quite elderly.  Almost every society has created a day given to acknowledge the memories we hold of persons who no longer live but were once held dear or were well respected, or those who were persons noticed as one among the crowd and welcomed as fellow travelers. 

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives,” Mother Teresa wrote as part of “Anyway,” a poem she wrote. “Be kind anyway.”   While the overall quote presents an argument for good and follows with some potential perception difficulties, it exhorts us to do good anyway. Similarly, this part of the quote speaks to kindness, presents a potential difficulty and offers direction, which is to be kind anyway.

This might feel like one of those, “Here’s the problem with America” kind of columns. And while I would never synthesize the totality of issues we face as Americans into a singular element, this is an issue that permeates everything from the highest levels of politics to our everyday conversations. I call it collective straw manning. A straw man fallacy, which is a long-established and routinely referenced logical foible, is when somebody distorts or misrepresents their opponent’s argument or position to make it easier to refute.

In this late-blooming spring, central Minnesota is experiencing a confusing this-way, that-way reopening of our traditional growing season. In March and early April, with winter stubbornly refusing to loosen its grip, we began predicting the outcome of this strange seasonal divide: the end of winter, a brief nod by springtime and a sudden summer.

This past week, approximately four minutes into its flight, a SpaceX unmanned rocket aimed for the moon exploded amid cheers from the SpaceX employees charged with making the rocket. Reportedly, the cheers came as employees were excited to find out what was working but more excited to learn what was not working. Progress is often seen as an effort to take research, best practices, experience, training, expertise and action to formulate a theory of action and promote a trial run. At the trial run phase, all of the above mentioned elements come together, the trial is forwarded, and data is collected to see how well the trial works.