Opinion

The year 2021 was a unique year for Sauk County Rural Safety Days. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s event was held virtually. We had nearly 1,100 third and fourth graders (last year’s third grade who missed the event due to COVID-19) participate this year.

Mr. Know-it-all has bad manners. You start to say, “The Mariners have a good chance to win it all this year because….” Mr. Know-it-all butts in, proclaiming loudly, “But their veterans get too tired, and they don’t have a home run hitter.”

You can’t have a normal conversation with Mr. Know-it-all. He wants to interrupt every sentence.

“Help Wanted” signs are popping up all across Wisconsin. There are several reasons why Wisconsin is short of workers: A recovering economy, the Republican legislature’s stubborn refusal to support a living wage, closed schools and child-care facilities due to the pandemic and lackluster population growth.

Founded in 1865, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) extended into almost every southern state by 1870 and became a vehicle for white southern resistance to the Republican Party’s policies aimed at establishing political and economic equality for Black Americans.

I hope this letter finds you all well and feeling optimistic. I know I am! I am feeling like forward progress is being made and that is so exciting! I have often heard the phrase that we are “rewinding” back to normal. I personally don’t think there is really a “rewinding” as much as it is a moving forward with renewed purpose.

The baby chickens are here! They are some of the sweetest little burdens I could have. They are fluffy little ping pong balls who bounce around like super-heated molecules and then collapse where they are and fall asleep.

In March, the Washington Post reported that University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Rebecca Blank sought to move a conversation around the COVID-19 pandemic and students returning to campus in the fall to a private portal used by presidents and chancellors of the 14 Big Ten universities.

As I grow old, I muse on some of my first loves. Once upon a time, they were so thrilling, so full of promise. But some of them went on to disappoint me, particularly the iris. Oh, I loved iris! The deep colors, the amazing structure of those standards and falls and beards!

In his latest E-update of April 30, State Sen. Howard Marklein bemoans at length what he describes as Gov. Evers’ failure to “reach out to the legislature to discuss his ideas” for the new budget, leaving legislators to “craft the state budget in a vacuum.”