Health

Minnesota's oldest Norwegian-American town, Houston County's Spring Grove, bills itself as a "pretty neat small town," and we've learned about its citiens' fondness for Norski street festivals and parades from watching a dear friend's Facebook page.

Medical expenses are on everybody’s mind these days, and for good reason. There’s talk about Medicare spending in almost every deficit discussion. There’s Steven Brill’s tremendous cover story in Time Magazine about the insanity behind medical expenses (it may take an hour to read in its entirety, but it really is worth it). There’s also some talk about how nurse practitioners (NPs) could be a shortcut to lowering healthcare costs and expanding access to care.

My father, an Old Country immigrant, had a habit I like to call a ritual. He left the dishwashing to my sisters and the drying to me, but after every meal he routinely escaped to the garden in back with a handful of leftovers––potato peels, eggshells, apple cores, bean tips, and other debris dirt likes to eat––and there he’d dig a little hole with his spade and bury the stuff.