Insulin is an essential, life-saving drug that has been around for more than a century. Despite that, leading manufacturers have drastically increased prices by more than 600 percent over the past two decades. I will always remember hearing about a 65-year-old retiree in Minnesota with diabetes who was forced to spend nearly half his monthly income on insulin.

Last fall, I accompanied a friend of mine to visit his Aunt Rosie in an assisted living facility in Mason City. I had met this extraordinary woman once before and was taken in by her positive attitude and zest for life. What is even more amazing, is that Rosie suffers from a form of dementia where she has very limited short-term memory.

I had a fun conversation with person who was fairly new to faith and new to being a regular part of any church. It started out with, “Pastor John, this church thing really surprised me!”

Being on the Kasson-Mantorville School Board has taught me many lessons about the system at large and at the collegial level. I found taking on such a leadership role without much previous experience interesting, especially that I was only 22 at the time. When I decided to run, it wasn’t with any agenda or political hacking. I was there because I wanted to see first-hand how the system operates.

Minnesota lost one of the state’s great politicians and leaders last week with the death of former Sen. Dave Durenberger on January 31 at age 88.
Durenberger first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1978 to replace Sen. Hubert Humphrey who had died earlier that year. He remains the only Minnesota Republican elected to three terms in the U.S. Senate.

Poets and artists have written about or painted scenes of wintery splendor forever. We have a photograph of a beautiful winter setting captured by a local photographer of a snow-covered bridge. A print by Ron Hunt of an old farm located along a snowy road hangs in our living room.