EXCERPT: “Working to bridge gaps in understanding between residents of urban and rural areas of Minnesota, Melissa Wray is passionate about finding the humanity in all of us . . . While she currently lives in Minneapolis, Wray grew up in Caledonia on a sheep farm. After hearing a continuous narrative in the news of the ...

EXCERPT: “In four of the past five statewide primaries, greater Minnesota voters were more likely to participate than residents of the seven-county Twin Cities area. In three of those contests, the sheer number of greater Minnesota voters was greater than in the Twin Cities. That dominance comes even as greater Minnesota has fewer registered voters (1.4 ...

  We’re joined this week by Phil Claussen, Director of Human Services for Blue Earth County, and Angie Youngerberg, Assistant Human Services Director, to talk about Blue Earth County’s Yellow Line Project, an innovative program that has county human services, law enforcement and the courts working together to get people who need treatment more than ...

EXCERPT: “The tendency of young people to leave small-town America for the big city isn’t new. But for the past few decades, more and more of us have been doing it. As Alana Semuels pointed out in an article for The Atlantic a couple years ago, ‘Over the past two decades, as cities have become job centers that attract ...

EXCERPT: “When the Lake County Board of Commissioners voted last week to approve a $3.5 million purchase agreement for Lake Connections, the county’s municipal broadband Internet project, there were some gasps that the federal government and taxpayers could lose up to $45 million in the deal. Pinpoint Holdings in Lincoln, Neb., submitted the bid for the ...

  Farm Fest 2018 will feature the “World Series” of candidate forums with big races in the Senate, Congress and for governor. Kent Thiesse tells us more about this annual ag event Aug. 7-9 at the Gilfillan Estate near Redwood Falls.

EXCERPT: “Talk about unfair. Millions of broadband customers in rural and underserved urban markets are paying nearly identical prices for slower DSL service as customers who have access to high-speed fiber services. That’s the conclusion from a report published this week by the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), which advocates for more equitable broadband deployment. In places where AT&T ...

EXCERPT: “The Minnesota Public Facilities Authority (PFA) approved $7.06 million in loans and grants for water infrastructure projects in six Minnesota communities. Funding was approved for projects in Lowry, Eden Valley, Rice Lake, Mankato, Courtland and Pemberton. ‘Communities across Minnesota face serious water-quality challenges,’ said Governor Mark Dayton. ‘This funding supports improvements that will give residents ...

EXCERPT: “In medieval times, rust was a hassle. Knights would battle in the rain, blood slicking their armor. Back at the castle they’d remove their chain mail and place it in casks filled with sand; children rolled the casks around the keep. ‘That would polish it up and get rid of any rust,’ Edie Ramstad says. ...

EXCERPT: “Fiber cables generally offer the fastest internet speeds, but broadband providers have spent years wringing their hands over running expensive cabling to rural areas with small customer bases. Thankfully, so-called fixed wireless hardware appears set to change that equation, as Midcontinent Communications (Midco) is now offering wireless internet service to historically underserved communities within the U.S.’s ...