I often joke that I am the healthiest unhealthy person I know. I have many chronic conditions, including diabetes, asthma and glaucoma. But thanks to research done by the National Institutes of Health, I have medications that, at 61, have me at the healthiest I’ve been in years. If you don’t think the cuts to NIH impact you and you …
Wednesday, December 7, 2022, is a day that will live in infamy (to borrow a catchy phrase from my favorite president) for me. While visiting the USS Arizona Memorial on Pearl Harbor Day, I experienced severe chills in 80-degree weather. I went to the gift store and bought a really cool Pearl Harbor jacket, put it on and zipped it …
Last Sunday, I woke up a little later than usual. I don’t go to the Y on Sundays — church day. I woke up shaking and shivering like crazy — I was freezing. And I had intense shooting pains in my right leg. Uh-oh, I said. The cellulitis is back. Damn. I got up, took a hot shower to try …
I have COVID. You can take all the right precautions, wear a mask at all times, socially distance, wash your hands, etc., and still get it. As luck would have it, I hadn’t left my house for more than 72 hours before showing symptoms, so no one else was exposed. That made contact testing much easier! I got tested after …
The coronavirus has closed a lot of businesses, including barbershops, whose gravitational pull was once the envy of any trade. Shuttering these shops decades ago would have gagged communication in small towns and urban neighborhoods. Any news worthwhile to the citizenry was heard in Dad’s barbershop, long before it arrived at the newspaper office. The simple marketing genius of a …
It’s suddenly become vital to all of us: The need to practice “social distancing” to “flatten the curve” of a now out-of-control pandemic known as COVID-19. Admit it. Two weeks ago, most of us wouldn’t have had a clue what any of that meant. Way back then, I was mostly worried about putting up a new big screen TV in …
I’m sitting in front of my computer trying to arrange a flight home from West Virginia University for India. As I write, West Virginia is the only state in the union without a documented case of the Coronavirus, still things feel a little safer out here in our prairie isolation. It feels a little like it did in the days …
A few weeks ago, on a Minnesota trip to visit my family, I also got together with my friends, Craig and Stephanie Bowron. For a couple of hours in their St. Paul home, Stephanie played piano, Craig and I played guitars, and we sang ourselves hoarse, everything from the Beatles to Johnny Cash. That seems like a lifetime ago now. …
You might remember Thursday, when the stock market decline was the worst in decades and news of the coronavirus pandemic seemed to grow more grim by the hour. A bad day, for sure. And yet … There was Dave Brown. My wife and I had tickets to see the Eagles at the American Airlines Center in Dallas next week. We …
Occasionally, I will hear from people that they don’t care about politics, that what happens in Washington doesn’t affect them. They don’t like the chaos or behavior of the current administration, but the stock market is doing well, so they can look the other way in the face of the rise in autocratic fascism that is threatening our national security …
It’s been an Epic week. So there I was last Thursday in Wahpeton, N.D., at the Red Door Gallery preparing for my next photo exhibit, “A Photojournalist’s Retrospective” highlighting my work of the past 55 years. As I passed Chahinkapa Zoo on my way out of Wahpeton, my cell phone rang. It was Erin, a Mayo Clinic appointment secretary, to …
I was listening to the radio recently when I heard a breakthrough news flash. It was so earth-shattering, I almost had to stop to reset my breathing. The radio announcer reported that “new research” is out there that implies that fruits and vegetables are healthy for you and can help prevent disease. Furthermore, if you can manage eating 10 servings a …
Apparently area senators have never heard of Dwight D. Eisenhower. He warned about an out-of-control military complex … and Sens. Heidi Heitkamp and John Hoeven of North Dakota and Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota just voted for that. The budget the Senate approved is a $700 billion defense policy bill. It’s only $37 billion more than the president …
National Heart Month, which is celebrated in February, has always held a special place in my heart, pardon the pun. If you guessed that I might have had a heart attack, you’re close. I suffered a stroke in November 1993. I was just 42 years old. I wondered how that could happen to me. But not for long. After chats …