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Getting our priorities straight

As a parent, I spend a lot of time thinking about our family’s budget. Do we take a spring break trip, or contribute to the kids’ college fund? Do we eat out less to offset rising health insurance premiums? Every day, we weigh wants against needs and make choices based on what really matters. We ought to do the same thing at the Legislature when we’re spending taxpayer money. But right now, priorities are way out of whack. When it’s your own paycheck, the decisions are clear. When it’s public dollars, things get blurry and sometimes warped. Take the $40 million ...

Controlling how much we eat

A challenging situation that psychologists may encounter is someone who wants to lose weight. They may sincerely want to lose weight, but they then find many ways to sabotage their progress. For many people, controlling how much they eat presents a major struggle. Their self-control melts away when faced with something tasty and delicious. Regulating how much they should eat is out the window. When the food is in front of you, and you are free to eat as much as you want, a large amount of food may be consumed.: Part of the challenge is controlling how much you eat, while you are ...

Forty-five years on

My wife and I recently marked our 45th wedding anniversary. This is a mathematical impossibility as I feel as though I’m not a day over 40. But maybe that’s just my intractable immaturity talking. My wife was 22 and I was 23 when we were wed. Knowing what we know now, we know that we were too young to know what we didn’t know. Plus, it means that we’ve been married for two-thirds of our lives. Will that fraction keep creeping upward until it reaches 100%? Time will tell. I can’t help but feel that my wife and I are hopelessly out of style. Why? I’m ashamed to admit ...

I like words

When you write an occasional column, you think about words. I like words. I try to find the right ones whether I’m talking or writing. Sometimes I succeed. In my last piece, there was this line. “It is fast time our nation binds our wounds and heals.” The day it came out, a friend said there was a misprint. She thought it was supposed to be “It is past time.” No, I meant “It is fast time.” The nearest equivalent to saying, “It is fast time for something to happen” is “It is high time for that to happen.” In other words, it is due. That is slightly different than ...

Humble pennies had value that’s now a distant memory

If we had a conversation about things that get no respect, one of the first items that should be mentioned is the good old copper penny. Federal officials recently announced that they’ll no longer issue new pennies. We’ll just use the ones that are already in circulation. Eventually they’re likely to fade away. We’ve reached a point where the penny is almost worthless. Someone who works for minimum wage makes hundreds of pennies every hour. Many people don’t even pick up a penny if they see one on a sidewalk or in a parking lot. It’s almost insult to tell someone the ...

Minnesota’s election process basics

What follows is a brief outline of the election and voting rules used in Minnesota. For more specific information, go to the Secretary of State’s website www.sos.mn.gov/elections-voting/Each state establishes its own election and voting rules. Here are some ways in which Minnesota differs from some other states. Minnesota only uses paper ballots which are counted by vote tabulating machines. Those machines are tested for accuracy before and again after each election. In Minnesota there are no “Registered Republicans” or “Registered Democrats.” Citizens who ...