Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913
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Open the pod bay doors, HAL. Soylent Green is people. I’ll be back! While we’re not quite at the point of taking our flying cars to work while our robot maids dutifully dust and vacuum our homes, we’re inarguably living in a time where the thought of such things don’t seem too unreasonable. The movies, shows and literature of the past, at the time appearing deeply entrenched in science fiction, now at times appear very normal in how they portray future technologies. Self driving cars? Facial recognition? Virtual reality? Psh. How quaint!...
If you’re an investor, you no doubt pay a great deal of attention to your stocks, bonds and mutual funds. But you shouldn’t forget another key element of your financial strategy: cash. Cash is part of any financial strategy and investment portfolio, but how much have you thought about the different uses of cash, and how much you really need? Consider these four key purposes: • Unexpected expenses and emergencies – If you face an interruption in employment, you need an extensive home repair or you encounter an unplanned medical expense, you may...
One of the rewards for working over several decades is the ability to contribute to tax-advantaged retirement accounts, which can help provide needed income for you when you do retire. As the years went by, you may well have accumulated several retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401(k)s or similar employer-sponsored plans. But you might find it advantageous to consolidate these accounts with a single provider. Consolidating them can provide you with several potential benefits, including these: • Less confusion and clutter – If you have mul...
We know, accept and often welcome the fact that big technology companies exist. The likes of Microsoft, Apple, Meta (the company behind Facebook) and of course Amazon, all while sprawling in their reach, offer us the convenience of being one-stop sources to shop, work or learn. Often, we’ll pick favorites from these giants to capitalize upon that convenience. Amazon’s great pricing or Walmart’s reliable shipping - whatever the reason, we tend to put at least the majority of our eggs into one basket here. This becomes an issue though when one o...
I'm much too good at putting things off. Who wants to think about pulling all the tomatoes when it's still pushing 100°? Even though we're now into October (!), it hasn't seemed like fall. And so, having legitimately earned a Masters in Procrastination, my houseplants are still grouped on the front deck. The dahlias haven't been dug. The gladioli bulbs haven't been trimmed and bagged for winter storage. Shoot. I just had another picking of green beans a few days ago. I say pshaw to fall. (I...
The internet, in all its vastness and scope, does a wonderful job of delivering us things. Information, entertainment but also a seemingly unending stream of things to buy. Now, while I’m as guilty as the next person for my Amazon addiction, one can cast a much, much wider net. You can order food, clothes, furniture; truly anything your heart desires and your wallet allows. Whilst I (especially as a business owner myself) fully support shopping local, we do face limitations when it comes to choice. How did we get here though, to this land of e...
As you go through life, you will likely have long- and short-term financial goals. But how will your strategies for meeting your long-term goals differ from those needed for your short-term ones? If you’re like most people, your biggest long-term goal is achieving a comfortable retirement. And for this goal, a common strategy is putting away money in tax-advantaged retirement vehicles, such as your 401(k) and IRA. So, how should you go about preparing for shorter-term goals, such as a family vacation, home renovation, wedding or major p...
Language is a weird thing. It’s constantly evolving, changing and growing. Words fall in and out of common usage, are adopted from other dialects and just get plain old made-up then forced upon us colloquially. Something rather interesting has happened though with the rise of the internet, smartphones and general global connectivity. We’ve started supplementing our words in the classical sense with pictures, and it’s this group of pictures known as Emojis which now forms up to 92 percent of the online population’s daily language choice....
If you have a family member who has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, or is starting to show symptoms, you will face some real challenges. Navigating the Alzheimer’s experience involves a long journey, and there’s no easy answer for how you can cope with your emotions. But you can at least address some of the financial issues involved to help give yourself a greater sense of control. Here are some moves to consider: • Plan for care costs and identify insurance coverage. The list of Alzheimer’s-related medical expenses is long and inclu...
The calendar says it is officially fall, but you wouldn't know it with the return of such warm temperatures. I lucked out and didn't lose my entire garden to frost, even though our thermometer read 31.5° last week. I think all the trees that surround my garden kept enough warmth in there to counteract the brief time it dipped below freezing. There were a few leaves on the pumpkins that curled and turned black. I'm really grateful it wasn't worse since I hadn't covered anything. I'm still...
As much as I hate to see summer go, I cannot prevent fall from arriving. I hate seeing fall because we all know what follows, usually much too quickly. I'm giving in to reality, though, and starting on my regular fall clean-up-the-garden chores. I have all my houseplants that spent these past months outdoors gathered together on the front deck. If a frost threatens (and we've lucked out so far and not had one, although we did drop to 35° a couple weeks ago) I can easily get them covered....
Some of us, the lucky ones arguably, are old enough to remember when ending a phone call on our mobile device was facilitated with a satisfying snap. It’s just not the same, thumbing the red “end call” button on the delicate pieces of glass we carry around now. Instead of fidget spinners, we had fidget phones. The great thing is however, they’re making a comeback! So long as you’re not an Apple user, there are now options for smart, foldable, snappy closing phones which do everything we expect from our modern devices. But are they any more...
Benjamin Franklin once said, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” But as you chart your financial course, what steps should you take to help you keep moving forward to where you want to go? Consider these suggestions: • Establish and quantify your goals. Throughout your life, you’ll have short-term goals, such as an overseas vacation or a home renovation, and long-term goals, the most important of which may be a comfortable retirement. You’ll want to identify all your goals and put a “price tag” on them. Of course, it’s not alwa...
But Is It Art? Artificial intelligence, as I’ve written in the past, is an exciting and powerful means of computers completing tasks which would previously have been impossible or too time consuming to be justifiable. Another more recently popular use for AI is the generation of images from simple text prompts. Say you’d like an AI’s idea of how a cat looks, you’d program it to analyze a set of photos of actual cats, then return what it thinks is the most accurate rendition based on that data. In the early days, this produced results which o...
As much as I hate to see summer go, it’s going to. I can’t stop it. And so it’s definitely time to be thinking of clearing up the garden. I’ve been pulling all the dead and dying vegetation. That mostly consists of flowers past their prime, plus the dill and cilantro that’s gone to seed. I’ve pinched off dead marigold blossoms and scattered them around my “volunteer flower” section. This is the area that is almost constantly shaded by the big tree on the southeast corner of the garden. There are many flowers I didn’t plant. Most of them libe...
You may have heard that you can simplify your investment strategy just by owning index-based or passive investments. But is this a good idea? You’ll want to consider the different aspects of this type of investment style. To begin with, an index-based investment is a vehicle such as a mutual fund or an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that mimics the performance of a market benchmark, or index — the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and so on. (An ETF is similar to a mutual fund in that it holds a variety of investments but differs in tha...
In the earlier community education article "What is Harm Reduction," which was printed in the Aug. 31 issue of the Glasgow Courier, the harm reduction model was defined as a practice of strategies that reduce drug-related harm to the individual and community through programs to support well-being and lessen infectious disease transmission. Addiction and drug use are understood through the disease model as substance-use disorders. Evidence shows that harm reduction strategies do not encourage...
You probably won’t see it on your calendar, but September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. And it is indeed important to be aware of the importance of life insurance. Are you adequately insured? Many people aren’t. About 40 percent of Americans face some type of life insurance gap, either because they’re uninsured or underinsured, according to a 2021 survey by the research and advocacy groups LIMRA and Life Happens. The need for life insurance is pretty straightforward: If something were to happen to you, would your family be able to conti...
If you’re like most people, your work has been a central part of your life. So, wouldn’t it be nice to have the flexibility to decide when you no longer want to work? Many people of retirement age have achieved this type of control. In fact, two-thirds of workers ages 65 and older say they work primarily because they want to, not because they have to, according to a 2021 study by Edward Jones and Age Wave. But that means that one-third of workers in this age group feel financially compelled to work. This doesn’t necessarily mean they disli...
In Valley County, almost five percent of high school students have tried meth or heroin. Just over eight percent have tried cocaine, MDMA, or hallucinogens. Almost one-fifth have used a prescription medication other than as prescribed. 2021 American overdose deaths break record: over 107,000, or one death every five minutes. The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) asserts that harm reduction “emphasizes direct engagement with people who use drugs to prevent overdose and infectious disease transmission, improve t...
I’m starting this week with a short lesson, the meaning of doldrums. It’s a state or period of inactivity, stagnation, or depression. The term is nautical, taken from sailors describing an equatorial region of the Atlantic. The shifting area features calms, sudden storms, and light, unpredictable winds. Synonyms are: inactive, quiet, slow, slack, sluggish, subdued, stagnant, crestfallen, glum, blue, despondent, woebegone, and bummed out. Almost all these terms apply to me lately. I’ve skipped depressed and despondent, and I hope I’m not sta...
With a lot of the summer behind us and school returning, we’ve some inside time on the horizon. With this, brings the tendency to spend more time online, on social media and interacting with others by use of our smartphones. Is there a risk though of our digital interactions coming back to haunt us in the real world? Could careless language or photos online bite us years later, irrespective of the context at the time? Of course, the answer is yes. But how do we avoid it, and is there a period after which we can exhale, free from past web transg...
The garden keeps on growing: it’s relentless as long as it has water and the temps stay above freezing. And even when the first frosts hit, I’ll blanket the plants I wish to save. Those plants always include the tomatoes and peppers. Sometimes the cucumbers gets preferential treatment, as will some squashes. I try to put chairs out amongst those squashes and cukes to hold the coverings up enough to keep the cold from traveling through to the leaves that are in contact with the covering. I’ll lay the tomato cages over and have stakes pound...
Vacuuming sucks. Ba-dum tss. Now that I’ve cleared that obligatory dad joke hurdle, let’s talk about robot vacuums and the recent shift in power when it comes to their production. Vacuuming and more recently mowing are two industries which have perhaps seen the greatest traction when it comes to robotizing a manual task around the home. Really, they’re the perfect candidates due to their repeatability, low-risk and simple required function - both when drastically simplified only needing rotating mechanics and the ability to travel from point...
When many people hear the words “estate planning,” they assume it’s just for the wealthy. But that’s not the case because everyone can benefit from an estate plan. And when you’re creating one, you’ll want to avoid some common mistakes. Before we look at those mistakes, let’s go over what estate planning is designed to accomplish. Essentially, an estate plan allows you to pass on your assets in the way you desire. But it can also specify other actions, such as naming someone to care for your minor children if you were no longer around. In cr...
