Featured Stories

The Commonalities of Abuse And the Courage to Break Free By Katie McKy   Millions of Americans have watched the video of Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie being stopped and questioned by Moab police officers. A 911 caller reported that Laundrie had struck Petito, which Petito confirmed to one of the officers. That caller said, “The gentleman was slapping the girl…And then we stopped. They ran up and down the sidewalk. He proceeded to hit her, hopped in the car, and they drove off.” In Utah cases involving domestic violence, an arrest or citation is mandatory, but neither happened. What …

School Daze The Best and the Worst of Pandemic Pedagogy For centuries, pedagogy has been the same old, same old:  students congregate in a school, freely sharing air. Lunch is a noisy clustering of kids in a cafeteria, while recess and gym class have kids pinballing off each other. The COVID-19 has forced schools across America to reconfigure themselves on the fly — not an easy task, as the pandemic swelled and subsided and swelled again. Adapting to remote learning brings its own set of uncertainties, like iffy (or nonexistent) internet connections and some families lacking sufficiently quiet space for …

You may be wondering what you can do to better protect yourself during cold, flu and COVID season. The uncomfortable truth is that we are continually exposed to bacteria, viruses and fungi that are inhaled, swallowed, or live on our skin or in our body. Whether these organisms lead to disease depends partly on how “mean” the bug is and how many of them there are. However, it depends just as much, if not even more, on how well your immune system is working to defend your body. The good news is that there is a lot that you can …

Training Your Brain To Adopt Healthy Habits Would you rather have a doctor say to you “Take your medicine and things should get better” — or have a doctor sit down with you and explain why you need it?  Most of us would prefer the latter.  In the next few hundred words, I will do my best to explain to you how your brain works and how you can actually develop healthier behaviors. I would like to reference Trifton, Gordon, and Mirsa– the authors of “Training Your Brain To Adopt Healthful Habits: Mastering The Five Brain Challenges (2019). A lot …

If you would have asked me on January 1st what I would be doing 6 months into 2020, my answer would have been vastly different than what it now is. I would have told you that in June of 2020 I would have a few races under my belt, I would be starting my training for a longer race in the fall, my outdoor bootcamps would be in full swing and that I would be enjoying the start of the summer with family and friends. Instead I am facing a whole different reality – we are facing a whole different …

Recently, National Public Radio aired a news segment on Otzi, the 5,000-year-old frozen man discovered in the Italian Alps in 1991. Otzi has received a lot of attention, since he was the best-preserved “mummy” scientists have ever recovered. At the time of his death, this iceman was wearing a hide coat, skin leggings, a loincloth, fur hat, and hay-stuffed shoes. While extensive research has been carried out on the mummified corpse, scientists had been unable to identify the various animal skins due to their advanced state of decomposition. Thanks to recent advances in DNA testing, researchers have now identified the …

Kitchens are one of my favorite rooms to organize when assisting my clients. Why, you ask? Excluding the bedroom (because of the hours we spend sleeping), the kitchen is the most frequented room in our home. We spend a lot of time in our kitchens. If this room is unorganized—or if the organization isn’t tailored to how the cook uses it—we may be sending valuable kitchen time right down the drain. Click the magazine below to learn Nancy Rothwell’s Seven Steps to an Organized Kitchen on PAGE 32:

Ella Fitzgerald sang, “Summertime, and the livin’ is easy.” Listen to Ella. Of course, you could listen to the Kardashians, who live their lives in front of mirrors, forever polishing, primping, and poofing. Or you could really live, which means getting out there to smell that just-cut grass and stretch out like a cat on soft sand. However, you still want to look good goin’ out the door. You just want to get out that door ASAP. So, here are some quick and easy fashion, hair, and makeup tips. Click the magazine below to read the rest of Katie McKy’s …

I am a 51-year-old, unmarried woman without any children. Thankfully, this doesn’t make me quite the anomaly that it used to. In fact, last year’s U.S. Census Bureau showed more women are childless (47.6 percent) than at any other time since they began tracking in 1976. Yet the expectation remains; others assume a woman of my age has children. Click the magazine below to read the rest of Mary Ellen Bliss’s insights (for all of us) on being a child-free woman. The article is on PAGE 16:

Almost everyone knows a woman that has faced breast cancer. From close relatives to long-lost friends, disease has touched countless people. Sadly, many more are diagnosed daily. In the Chippewa Valley, Women Rock is an annual event offering a forum for addressing breast cancer through donations, shopping, camaraderie, and—most importantly—education. Charter Media (now Spectrum Reach) and Mayo Clinic Health System partnered together in 2003 to create Women Rock in Eau Claire. Click the magazine below to read the rest of Heather Rothbauer Wanish’s article detailing the Women Rock event PAGE 32: