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Anyone who watches sports has recognized the influx of flashy, funny and big-budget advertising promoting online sports gambling sites and apps. It could be argued that the “sport” of betting on sports seems to be just as popular as watching the game itself. A few months back, the sports gambling bill again failed to pass at the Minnesota Capitol. And while gambling on sports remains illegal in Minnesota, the reality is people are going to continue to place bets on sports and potentially head down an all-too-common path of problem gambling and addiction, which can lead to ...

NU Film Society screens cult classic ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’

NEW ULM — A rural Minnesota beauty pageant is next to get the mockumentary treatment as The New Ulm Film Society continues its screening series with “Drop Dead Gorgeous.” The screening starts at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 9 at the New Ulm Public Library and is free to the public. Released in 1999, “Drop Dead Gorgeous” is a dark comedy about a documentary film crew covering a small-town beauty pageant and the odd accidents occurring around it.  The film is set in the fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. The name is an anagram for Rosemount, where scriptwriter Lona Williams ...

A fellow traveler

During my previous life as an advertising salesman I would regularly stop at Koehn Marketing, located at Watertown, South Dakota, and chew the fat with owner Jeff Koehn. I would generally kick things off by asking, “How’s it going, Jeff?” and he would generally reply “Good, good! How about yourself?” Last winter when I stopped at Koehn Marketing and posed my usual opening question, Jeff threw me for a loop by answering, “Not so good. I just found out that I have tonsil cancer.” I told Jeff that I was sorry to hear this news and that I had never even heard of tonsil ...

‘Who’ll stop the rain’

Columnists rummage around in the closets of our lives looking for things we share. Those become leaping off points to write about. I didn’t have to look hard this time: water. If you’re reading this, you’ve had too much rain. For a few weeks, friends from further away asked if we had too much rain. One week, north of us got three or four or more inches. The next week south of us had four or five or more inches. Meanwhile, we were getting less. “We’re doing pretty good; we’ve missed the big rains,” I said. My response became officially obsolete last Saturday when four ...

COVID: it remains an important global health issue

It’s been four years since the height of the pandemic, but COVID is a sickness that still affects many lives. My own life has been impacted in the past week. That’s because of the COVID cases at a Marshall assisted living, facility, the home of my 86-year-old mother. I’ve been getting many good updates by email. The last of them said there were six cases out of 16 residents on my mother’s south unit. There was only one case on the north side. So far mom is not one of the cases. Hopefully she’ll continue to steer clear of it. I’m keeping my fingers crossed. COVID has ...

The Roberts court: A grave insult to the people

Chief Justice John Roberts, meet Roger Taney, your history big brother. Abraham Lincoln despised Taney as the legal upholder of white supremacy but had to suffer being sworn in by the old Maryland scarecrow in 1861. In that fraught March moment, the dark past and bright future of America came face to face. Lincoln defied Taney’s trying to thwart his path to war. It’s always well to see what Lincoln did — in this case, to a rogue Supreme Court. Until now, scholars thought nobody as bad as the dreaded Taney would ever haunt us again. Cracking open the divided nation like a ...