World Kindness Day was Nov. 13. It’s a day that needs to be recognized more than ever before. What many people have witnessed during the pandemic is frustration, anger, short tempers, and more. We see signs at fast food restaurants saying, “be nice -these are the employees who showed up,” or in stores saying, “we’re doing the best we can.” But even the signs reminding us to be nice aren’t working. We’re seeing anything but kindness.
To the editor: I recently drove from Minneapolis to Redwood Falls to meet Trixi, an adult cat available for adoption at Duke Memorial Shelter. Entering the shelter, a volunteer welcomed me and shared she was praying Trixi would go home with me.
On a single night in January of 2022, there were 7,917 people facing homelessness in Minnesota. This statistic comes from the Minnesota HMIS (Homeless Management Information System). Homelessness is frequently thought of as people staying in emergency shelters or sleeping out in the elements. However, homelessness is also people staying unexpectedly and temporarily with family or friends because they have nowhere else to go, “couch hopping” or “couch surfing,” and staying in places not typically meant for longterm shelters, such as staying in cars. The Homeless Hub points out that emergency shelters exist in medium to large-sized urban areas but are not generally available in rural areas and small towns.
A recent letter to the editor claims that carbon emissions were not the cause of global warming problems, and somehow Governor Walz actions are not helping either. Evidently 90% of the scientists in the world are wrong and the improvement of clean air is a waste of time. One man declared drinking bleach would cure COVID-19. Another declared that the Sandy Hook School massacre was fake. There is a cost to believing things that are completely false. Just like the false claim that the election was stolen, but only the presidential election, all the other republicans that were elected were fair elections. Stealing top secret documents is a crime and should be prosecuted as such and the penalty should be stiff. Now there are claims that the FBI is corrupt. Donald Trump claimed, why would you take the fifth if you were innocent, and then took the fifth himself over 450 times. What does that tell you? He is a one man crime wave. Somehow his followers think it is fine for him to commit tax evasion and in the next breath claim Joe Biden is stealing the election. If Donald Trump and people like him are the best you can come up with, and you think Putin and Russia are the better option, then we all are in for a rude awakening.
The thing about fall is that it’s not winter. Winter is winter. Winter comes right after fall. Fall is, try to stay with me here, directly after summer. The season of fall is named after a guy who first noticed the temperature dropping and, for some reason, coincidentally, was always dropping stuff. And, in another pretty big coincidence, his name was Fall.
October was a lot of skeletons and zombies and ghosts and it made me realize that Halloween omits an important step before the afterlife. The transition. All of these spirits were once living but now they’re dead. Fine, technically a zombie is undead. Which is a confusing. The prefix “un” means the absence of something. So if you’re unlikable, no one likes you. So I don’t understand how “undead” means dead but not dead. Anyway, I’m not sure whether you would want to have a service for the undead. I don’t know the etiquette on that one. But the ghosts and skeletons and were once living. And now they’re dead. So my question is: what did they think of their send off? Good turnout? Was there the right amount of weeping and wailing? I mean, you want some waterworks. But wallto- wall waterworks requires an arc and those things are really hard to park.
Question: I was wondering what the state guidelines are regarding smoked or tinted headlights. Are they legal? Answer: Minnesota law does not allow for this.
Letter to editor: Carbon Pipeline Concerns Area residents and landowners should be concerned about the proposed hazardous CO2 pipeline which Summit Carbon Solutions (SCS) plans to construct through this area. It would affect more people than just those with easements on their property. There are a host of unknown safety risks inherent to transporting highly pressurized CO2 in underground pipelines. The health and safety of people should be the top priority over profits.
Post- pandemic, families are coming together to celebrate a wonderful time of year. Between Thanksgiving and New Years' Day, countless celebrations, family gatherings, and work functions often occur.
A recent letter objects to my Sept. 29 letter in which I basically said that replacing all of Minnesota’s cars with electric vehicles would be totally worthless for controlling global warming. I gave multiple scientific reasons in that letter (and my March 31 letter) as to why ‘Man-made’ carbon dioxide is not the cause of global warming.