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Milk Depot receives donation The South Central Minnesota Breastmilk Depot, located in the Martin County Human Services building, recently received its first donation. Any milk donated to the depot is sent to the Minnesota Milk Bank in the Twin Cities, where a lot of it is given to babies in the NICU. This is a very valuable program and we’re lucky to have a depot right here in Fairmont. Kamp for Kids benefits community The Kamp for Kids red bag collection took place last weekend and an impressive 3,200 pounds of food donations, plus toys, was collected. This is a great ...

Jury’s supposed to make ‘right’ decision

Once again, Minnesota is the focus of the police vs. minorities struggle, when former Brooklyn Park police officer Kim Potter, a white woman, on trial for the shooting of Daunte Wright, a Black man. Potter shot Wright during a traffic stop after pulling her firearm instead of the Taser she says she intended to use. As in the trial of Derek Chauvin, and in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted in the killing of two men and the wounding of another during the protests in Kenosha, Wis., after the killing of another Black man by police, crowds are gathering and watching the trial ...

A whopping big surplus

Minnesota’s government officials must feel like the people who get a bank statement with a few more zeroes than they were expecting. They should be asking, “Is this a mistake? How did this happen?” On Tuesday the Minnesota Management and Budget office projected the state will have a $7.7 billion surplus over the next biennium. After pulling their eyeballs back in, officials should be asking what is the best way to get this extra money back to the people they took it from. With that extra cash, legislators will naturally want to use it. There are many good things that could and ...

Who gets to host Olympics?

The International Olympics Committee (IOC) is tasked with picking the host countries for the games. We wonder how their decisions are made? Apparently, concern for human rights is not on their agenda. The upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing are a case in point. For years, the Chinese government has been violating the rights of people within its border and without. It has suppressed dissent and freedom of speech, imprisoned political opposition, and has acted with aggression toward countries like Nepal and Taiwan. It’s response when other countries call it out has been to express ...

Justice, jubilation in Hall of Fame announcements

Minnesota Twins baseball fans, especially those of a certain vintage, will take great joy and feel great vindication in the announcement on Sunday that two of the finest Twins to play the game, Tony Oliva and Jim Kaat, will enter the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this summer. Oliva and Kaat, teammates for many years in the 1960s and ’70s, had been overlooked by the hall of fame voters for many years. But this year the Hall of Fame’s “Golden Age Committee” gave them the respect and the necessary votes they have deserved all this time, both at the age of 83. Oliva burst ...

Omicron is here

Well, that didn’t take long. It was only a week ago that health officials in South Africa reported a new variant of the COVID-19 virus, now known as the omicron variant. Other nations tried to set up travel bans to keep the virus in Africa, but it was already too late. Cases have been popping up around the world, including a Minnesotan who apparently caught it at an anime convention in New York even before the virus was announced to the world. You can bet there are more cases walking around. So omicron is here in Minnesota, half a world away from southern Africa. It apparently ...