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Pickleball? Lakes? Council meeting highlights. To the editor: Councilman: “Due to the urgency of citizens to add pickleball courts.” Urgency? Last meeting, the woeful pickleballers lamented, “We’ve been waiting 15 years.” Now it is “urgent”? Pickleballers if you are “impoverished”, I’m sorry, please excuse me. If not, build your own, rent SMEC (Southern Minnesota Educational Campus), dual-purpose courts. Risk your own time, effort and money, not ours. Council, did you ask neighbors, friends and relatives? Fairmont, “The City of Lakes” or pickleball? What ...

When postpartum becomes clickbait

Columns

Two stories have dragged the subject of postpartum depression into the center of the national conversation this week. First was the death of actress Hayden Panettiere at the age of 36, not long after speaking openly about her struggle with postpartum depression following the birth of her ...

Communicating without words

Columns

We are capable of saying a lot without using a single word. The face, body, eyes, and voice can provide a lot of information without words. Emotions, intentions, attitudes, agreement, disagreement, acceptance, rejection, and so many messages are transmitted instantly without any language at ...

Net zero is dead and gone

Columns

It was only a few years ago when the climate change alarms and green energy fad were all the rage at the White House and corporate board rooms. Former President Joe Biden's policies were all tilted to ending fossil fuels, and many of America's biggest corporations embraced the concept of ...

Unity, and careful messaging, will be key to Dem resurgence

Columns

Here's an easy lesson for rising political hopefuls to draw from Francesca Hong's failed bid to be Wisconsin's Democratic gubernatorial nominee: Don't demonize Thanksgiving. Hong, a chef, state legislator and democratic socialist, was the clear front- runner in the Democratic primary race ...

A tough job 

Columns

My wife and I recently provided daycare for our six-year-old grandson for a week. It will probably take me a month to recover. We had taken care of little boys before, obviously, although that was more than thirty years ago. We aren’t as young as we were back then, but little boys are ...