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for what it's worth

  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    May 05, 2020
    I don’t know about you, but keeping track of what day of the week it is has been a bit of a problem for me. It seems like we’ve been doing this stay-at-home thing forever when really it’s only been six weeks. That said, six weeks is a long time when you don’t know from one day to the next what the next day will bring. Our office has been functioning under essential business protocol since mid-…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    April 21, 2020
    It seems our minds have been flooded with numbers related to the coronavirus. How many people have been tested, how many positive results, how many negative results, how many are in ICU, how many, how many, how many … and it changes by the hour. I have my own coronavirus-related numbers, and they have nothing to do with the virus itself. I would like to give you an example of how to turn bad…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    April 07, 2020
    It’s been almost a month now that we have been in a virtual state of shutdown. Social distancing, shelter in place, essential business and hand washing — and now face masks have turned our worlds upside down. But really, has it been that unbearable? The whole day-to-day lifestyle changes pale in comparison to the mounting worries we are all facing. For me, I find it difficult to be living,…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    March 24, 2020
    Oftentimes when I sit down to write my column, I struggle as to what to write about. Well, as you can imagine, that is not a problem this week. You guessed it -- today’s topic is COVID 19. I am not going to tell you to wash your hands and cover your mouth and nose when you cough and sneeze. I am not going to tell you about whatever stimulus   program Washington is debating over, I am not going to…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    March 10, 2020
    It’s been five days since the “spring ahead” time change, and I am now just starting to adjust. Not sure why, but I struggle with the loss of an hour. Maybe it’s because I am a morning person and the added hour of darkness in the morning messes with me. That said, the good certainly outweighs the bad with the time change. The past weekend reaffirms that warmer days are coming. I saw my first…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    February 11, 2020
    Friday is Valentine’s Day. Truth be told, that is not one of my favorite days. Valentine’s Day puts undue pressure on me to be romantic — not one of my strong suits. I can be compassionate, caring and downright sentimental, but romantic not so much. To make matters worse, Mary will find herself sitting in the dentist’s chair to start her day. In the past, I’ve done the standard Valentine gift…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    January 28, 2020
    A few weeks ago we published the salaries of city department heads and the increases they were going to receive. We do the same with county and school personnel. The fact that we publish such information was the topic a conversation one day at coffee. Most at the table found it important while others (just one) really felt it was unnecessary. The argument against publicizing the salaries was that…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    December 17, 2019
    With nearly 400 greeting cards already collected, we sent off a couple hundred greeting cards last week to American military personnel currently deployed around the world, including four from Rock County. I would like to thank Lexi Moore and the students from the Hills-Beaver Creek schools and Jason Berghorst and the students from the Luverne schools for accounting for nearly half of the cards so…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    December 03, 2019
    I don’t know why, but maybe because the Peterson family celebrated Thanksgiving almost a month ago, it seemed to me that December wasn’t ever going to get here. Then all of a sudden December is here and Christmas is just three weeks away. So now that Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, I assume you have all your Christmas shopping done. Oh, not the case?…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    November 19, 2019
    I am writing my annual Thanksgiving column the week before Thanksgiving, and it’s all about Christmas. Last year the CEO class came up with the idea of “Light the Park” for Christmas. It was a huge success with hundreds of cars passing through the Luverne City Park enjoying the lighted Christmas displays. The CEO class has moved on to other projects this year. So as not to let the “Light the Park…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    November 05, 2019
    This coming Monday is Veterans Day, and as far as I am concerned, it’s in my top five most important days we honor each year. My top five are Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. You can rank them any way you want to, but for me Veterans Day and Memorial Day are only behind Christmas. I have told you this before. I am not a veteran, and the fact that I am not is one of…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    July 16, 2019
    As you are probably aware of, there are a number of ways you can tell when we are about to embark on a change of seasons — the calendar being the most obvious, but there are other signs as well. When spring is just around the corner, you start to see more boats being trailered down the highway and fewer snowmobiles. You probably make a mental note when you see your first robin of the year, and I…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    June 18, 2019
    By the time most of you read this, I’ll be back in town from a three-day golf trip to Breezy Point, courtesy of my son. He had won the trip on, of all things, a radio station promotion. So I was happy to enjoy a few days of golf, fine eats and an adult beverage or two on a radio station’s dime. Over the past 35 years in the newspaper business, first in Worthington, then Redwood Falls, and now…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    June 04, 2019
    One of the most popular — and of course most read — sections of our paper is the On the Record report. Each week On the Record recaps the calls that came into the local sheriff’s department. We have, on occasion, inadvertently left the On the Record report out of the paper, and rest assured, we hear about it soon after the Star Herald hits the street. The part of the On the Record report I would…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    May 21, 2019
    When you start to age, that’s different from getting older — at least I differentiate between the two. Getting older has more plusses than minuses. On the plus side, as you get older, you get your driver’s license. A few years older you can vote. Tack on a couple more years after you’re old enough to vote and you can enjoy an adult beverage, and so on. With aging, the minuses outnumber the…
  • By Rick Peterson, general manager
    April 09, 2019
    After one of our weekly Monday morning advertising meetings, the ever-popular bag phone, for whatever reason, was the topic of our post-meeting conversation. I was a proud bag phone user and would still be today if it was up to me. If memory serves me, it was a Motorola. I did check on eBay and found one just like the one I had for $14.99 plus $11.99 for shipping. Anyway, this brings me to the…
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