Tough Conversations

Benjamin Franklin has famously said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” These two depressing topics always seem to go together. April 16, the day after the deadline for filing taxes, is National Healthcare Decisions Day. Because death and taxes go hand-in-hand, NHDD was established on April 16 […]

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Wagering on Pro Wrestling? You Bet!

When I was a kid, I was a huge fan of professional wrestling. While I conceded that matches were choreographed or even scripted, I hated it when people referred to wrestling as “fake” because you can’t pretend to be thrown off the top of a 15-foot tall cage onto a table. In the 1980s, Hulk […]

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Image is Everything

A week before I started my senior year of high school, pop culture felt a seismic shift – Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” was released. It became the first hip hop song to top the Billboard charts and his album, ‘To the Extreme,’ became the fastest selling hip hop album of all time, spending sixteen […]

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Lactose Tolerant

When I was a kid, there were six kinds of milk in our grocer’s refrigerated section – whole, skim, 1%, 2%, chocolate milk and buttermilk. Today, I can barely count how many varieties there are. In addition to these standards, which have been dubbed “dairy milk,” there are many drinks made from the liquid extracts […]

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Tire-d of Ratings

When I was a kid, I loved going to Madison for Badger games or for the State basketball tournament. I remember getting excited to see the giant Michelin Man outside a tire store. I can only assume his husky frame is attributable to trying all of the restaurants contained in his guide. In 1900, brothers […]

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A Frog in your Throat

The other night, I caught a rerun of ‘The Simpsons’ entitled ‘Missionary: Impossible.’ In this particular episode, Homer reneges on a $10,000 pledge to PBS. When the whole town is ready to come after him with pitchforks and torches, Reverend Lovejoy steps in and sends Homer on a mission to the South Pacific until the […]

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Ending the Pandemic Designation: Part Two

For the first time since 2020, when the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act was passed in response to the pandemic designation, it is expected that the assistance plans put in place to help those receiving public benefits will come to a close at the end of March. As you probably recall, the […]

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Burger Wars

When I was a kid, I was a pretty picky eater. I liked peanut butter sandwiches, spaghetti and hamburgers – that was about it. So, whenever my family went out to eat, my parents invariably ended up going through the McDonald’s drive-thru to pick me up a burger. McDonald’s was, and still is, my go-to […]

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Liver Let Live

As a kid, my favorite football player was Barry Sanders, who was taken 3rd overall in the 1989 NFL draft by the Detroit Lions. The worst part is that he could have played for my favorite team. After Dallas took Troy Aikman first, the Packers selected Tony Mandarich, passing on Sanders, Derrick Thomas and Deion […]

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