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Answering common questions about elections and voting

These are brief answers to commonly asked questions about elections and voting in Minnesota. For more information see www.Vote411 or www.sos.mn.gov/elections-voting. What are the qualifications for voting in MN? To vote in Minnesota, you must be: • A U.S. citizen • At least 18 years old on Election Day (16- & 17-year-olds can pre-register) • A resident of Minnesota for 20 days • Not currently incarcerated for a felony conviction • Not under a court order that revokes your right to vote When is identification required for voting in MN? Identification and ...

DIY distress

There are several three-lettered acronyms that invoke anxiety, such as FBI, IRS, and IOU. An acronym that should be added to that list is DIY. “Do it yourself” sounds seductively simple. While there are numerous things that people should definitely do themselves — such as blowing ...

It’s time to go but not completely

After more than 26 years at The Journal and passing what many consider retirement age, it’s time to move on at least to a degree. After working five or six days a week and holding one full-time job and up to three part-time jobs at the same time, it’s not easy to just cut loose from it ...

Enjoying Toast

My wife, my sister Jane, and I recently got toasted. It had nothing to do with overconsumption of alcohol or being feted at a festive gathering. This toast had to do with bread. Sort of. The music group Bread flooded the AM airwaves with hit tunes during the 1970s. Bread essentially created ...

Empty buildings now just ghosts

For 90 years, summers in Sleepy Eye followed the rhythms of the Del Monte factory on the west end of town. Sights, sounds, and smells that everyone knew ebbed and flowed through the pea and sweet corn canning seasons. Now the lot that saw trucks and employees busily crisscrossing sits empty. Weeds grow from the cracks. The conveyors that carried ears of corn into the plant sit quiet, rusting. It’s still weird to drive by, even though it’s been six years since there were piles of sweet corn. Depending which way you go through town, Del Monte is the first or last of three prominent ...

A tough job

My wife and I recently provided day care for our 6-year-old grandson for a week. It will probably take me a month to recover. We had taken care of little boys before, obviously, although that was more than thirty years ago. We aren’t as young as we were back then, but little boys are still as energetic as tornadoes. My grandfathers were stoic, stately men who sat on the couch and drank black coffee and talked about crops and world events. They did not get on the floor with their grandkids and played with toys with them. But in their defense, they each had a score of ...