Some area children are now ready to take on the school year. 
Volunteers with Ready, Set, Learn, a back-to-school program, handed out backpacks full of school supplies to qualified Dodge County children at St. John’s Lutheran Church on Aug. 14 and 15. 

A Steele County couple is hitting the back roads of Minnesota and Wisconsin to raise money to aid in the cure for a crippling disease.
Carl and Denise Wieman of Owatonna took part in the 32nd Annual Multiple Sclerosis River Road Run this past weekend. The run was a motorcycle tour that ventured from the south metro and went into western Wisconsin before ending up in Hastings. 

Roughly ten years ago, Kasson-Mantorville offensive coordinator Terry Donovan remembers when his son, Riley, was first learning about the game of football. After becoming enamored with the sport, he would sit down, turn on ESPN and watch Monday Night Countdown.

As the summer days dwindle to a close, so does the peaceful bliss that cover the town. 

It seems like you just graduated high school, but in a week or two you're going to start college. Even if you aren’t a freshman, it’s never too late to start new habits, meet new people, or start new extracurricular activities.

As I look back on my childhood days, there was one ritual in our household that created some anxious moments in the middle of the week. It was the arrival of the local newspapers. 

No doubt you noticed that the front page of this week’s DCI is ... blank!
Goes to show what you’d miss if every page of every newspaper was blank, if us journalists did not plug in the news, week after month after year, so help us God. You would not know:

It’s all fun and games until someone throws up.
Luckily, no one involved in any of the three eating contests on Aug. 11 vomited, although some probably wanted to.
The eating contests were one of the many activities held during Kasson’s annual Festival in the Park celebration, which lasted from Aug. 9 through Aug. 13.

He has grilled good stuff for years, and done some barbeque judging, but Chuck Erickson finally jumped into the Festival in the Park Rib Cook-O fray – and won. The Kasson man placed first in the chicken category, second in pulled pork, and third in ribs on Saturday, earning the title of Grand Champion.