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Why do farmers support Trump?

I was on the tractor tilling corn ground. I got a call from a college buddy. I answered. Kevin has always been wonderfully blunt. Before I could say hello, Kevin said, “Randy, why do farmers support Trump?” I stumbled around that question for a couple minutes before we switched to talking about our wives and kids. I don’t have a good answer to Kevin’s question. I don’t even have a bad answer. A lot of us have burned up brain cells trying to understand the affection for Donald Trump. We just completed the most expensive and loudest election in our history. For sure, the ...

AI, data centers create need for technology regulation

The expanding national debate over technology’s future was spotlighted very effectively last week in a Family Circus comic strip. Dolly (the little girl) was praying on her bed. She asked God to deliver us. Instead of saying “deliver us from evil”, she asked God to “deliver us from email”. I thought it was prophetic. Email and texts are fine for person to person communication, but we definitely should be delivered from spam and e-marketing. It’s just one of many issues involving electronic technology. The development of AI has made it much worse. I read a recent ...

Jones grew up community-focused; expects higher education changes

Back in late August I attended the Marshall Area Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours event at the suite level of the Schwan Regional Event Center. The event was hosted by the Southwest Minnesota State University Athletics Department. After all the speeches and updates by athletic ...

Boxed out

The ancient pine box had probably sat in the upstairs closet of my parents’ farmhouse since the Late Mesozoic Era. At least that’s how it appears. The box’s wood has oxidized into a deep nut-brown and bears more than a century’s worth of scars. It reminds me of a grizzled old cowboy ...

Modern day veterans deserve sincere thanks and appreciation

We have a special holiday coming up next week, one that might be easy to overlook between the election aftermath and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday. I’m talking about Veterans Day. It’s a tradition that goes back to the World War I armistice. For more than a century, we’ve set aside a special day to recognize soldiers who sacrificed for our freedom. Each year I participate in a Veterans Day observance. I sing in the Boulder Estates choir, which performs several songs as part of a Veterans Day program. We currently have 17 veterans at Boulder Estates, fewer than in the ...

Raising lung cancer awareness during November

One of the best things you can do for overall good health is to quit smoking or never start in the first place. November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and the Great American Smokeout is on the third Thursday of November each year – Nov. 19 in 2026. The good news is that cigarette smoking rates have been declining for decades. Yet lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths in the U.S., accounting for about one in five of all cancer deaths, according to the American Cancer Society. Each year, more people die of lung cancer than colon, breast and prostate cancers ...