Opinion

When I was growing up in the early 1980s, we had a weekly newspaper in our town. There was a woman assigned to cover our little neighborhood. I remember her calling each week to ask my mother what was new in our family. Did Jeremy make the honor roll this quarter? Had we gone on vacation recently? Did we get a new pet? She would take this information from anyone in the neighborhood who was willing to share it and would write a column each week. When the paper came out on Wednesdays, my mother was always excited to read what was going on in the neighborhood. Everyone on our street knew each other. We played outside with the kids every day until dusk. My parents were in a bowling league with our neighbors. We had a block party in the street in the summer. When a new family moved in everyone welcomed them and introduced themselves. I guess you could say it was a great community.

Sometimes it’s good to think about the relationships that we have with others. We think about if those relationships are strong or not and whether or not we want to try to strengthen them, or if we want to end them. For many of us, having good relationships is an important part of our lives, our well-being, and our spiritual health also. I say it’s important for our spiritual health because there is no relationship that is more important than the relationship that we have with our God. But, even as I say that relationships are important, I also think we should remember that even more important than relationships are people.

My name is Rhonda Miller and I am the Regional Accounting Manager for the Minnesota newspapers, and a few others, owned by CherryRoad Media. My office is located in our St. James site. I have been with the newspaper for almost 30 years and have dabbled in quite a few different rolls along the way. I have always enjoyed helping customers place ads, make payments, and work with them on billing issues or concerns about their ads. It is always a great feeling to help out customers and most times being able to end discussions with smiles and satisfaction.

March 8 is International Women’s Day. Don’t ask me how I know this. I just do. So let us speak of Woman, specifically the International Woman. I like her. Very much. In my opinion She deserves much more than a day. But time waits for no man. Or woman, it seems. So ... let’s get to it.

Editor’s note: Pastor Nate and Chris Belkstrom, of Living Word Church in Redwood Falls, have been in Bucharest, Romania since early January and sent the following report on the situation there and the work they are doing. They wrote this Feb. 28.

If you know me, you know Eastern European missions has been a part of our lives for more than 25 years. My wife, Chris, and I arrived in Bucharest in January and will return the last of March. When we first arrived, we noticed there were more COVID restrictions than in Minnesota and were told that one of the reasons for that is that nobody wants to end up in the Romanian health care system! That’s partially a joke.

Question: I just moved to MN and heard you talking about not using cruise control in the winter, can you please write about this? Answer: Using cruise control on slippery roads could send you on a winter cruise – straight into the ditch or oncoming traffic! With dry road conditions, cruise control helps you safely monitor your speed, stay within the speed limit and improve driving comfort on long, fairly straight stretches of road. It should be used only when you are able to drive at a steady speed with safe road conditions.