News you can use

You probably have some ideas about where your home is losing energy. We did too, but we wanted to make sure we knew the full story. We saw that Xcel Energy was offering subsidized home energy audits, and we signed up.

The sun streams in to my upstairs home office, and I’m gazing at the icy sidewalk. I put down salt and sand yesterday. If I go out and shovel, will it finally get the job done? Will I be able to get to bare sidewalk? If I lived in a special test area of Northeast (everything north of Lowry), it might be too late, as the city may already have sent me a letter telling me to clear my sidewalks or face a big bill.

Yesterday, Minnesota Public Radio reported that the number of people who have contracted the flu or have flu-like symptoms this year has spiked. It reports, “Hospitalizations are up, and some Twin Cities area hospitals are at or near capacity due to a surge in flu cases. Hospital emergency rooms and urgent care clinics have been especially busy in the past few days.”

In the 1950s, long before America's social atomization described in the book "Bowling Alone," my dad went to work in a carpool. The other travelers were his fellow Ph.D.