Parenthood 5

Parenthood, in retrospect, is composed of important moments. While changing my son, I reached across the room for diapers and he shifted from the changing table, falling very hard on his head on the carpet...and I thought I had damaged him forever.

Hillsdale curriculum is not good education

For over two years, right-wing think-tanks and Fox News have railed against CRT (Critical Race Theory) teaching in the schools. Gov.-Noem jumped on the anti-CRT bandwagon in late 2021. Presumably, it was the presence of narratives about slavery that prompted Gov.

What do you say?

Before my junior year in high school, I returned from a Boy Scout canoeing trip to discover my sister had been killed in a car crash.

Stray Thoughts: Parenthood 4

When our children are young: every time you saw them, you changed them. you lifted them and swung them around by their arms. you teach them routines so they know what to do and when. you help them brush their teeth and put the toothbrush away.

Little Pasture on the Prairie

This was a difficult week in the midst of a string of challenging months. Since having COVID in December, I haven’t fully returned to my old self, and I’m beginning to think I never will.

Parenthood 3

At one time or another, we all do this. We look through our grown children’s rooms, now sitting as stark memorials to the past, their important things undisturb and set up exactly as your children left them. These are artifacts of a childhood done well. Developmental years on curated display.

Day care needs community help

Our community is facing a crisis, and I’m not referring to the fact that we’ve run out of places to pile snow. Our working families are up against a predicament that impacts many people and businesses in the Timber Lake area. I’m referring to our Community Daycare.

Stray Thoughts: Parenthood 2

I am finally out here on my own! Out from under the watchful eye of my parents, where I can do and say anything that I want, whenever and wherever I want. But it sure was nice having my favorite meals prepared for me that I didn’t have to think about or pay for, or cook, or clean up after.

It’s healthy to talk about bodily functions

One summer during my college years, another premed student and I got a job at the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis, as nurses’ aides. At that time, the guys were called orderlies, but we were part of the nursing department.

Openness in government takes some work

This week is Sunshine Week – a national observance of the importance of open government and the public’s right to know. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said more than a century ago: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.