New View Askew

  There is a reason for celebration as well as remembrance today. This is the first Memorial Day in twenty years that our nation is not at war - Hallelujah! Members 4th Div. Stryker Brigade  Afghanistan 2018 Our celebration must, however, be tempered by the fact that of the 3 million plus members of our armed forces who served in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars (including my son) 7057 men and women - and 8000 civilian contactors - gave the last full measure for their country.  We must remember too that those lives lost also mean that thousands of families watched with dread as a military vehicle pulled up to their home bringing them the terrible news. There are no words to describe that pain. There is an additional and unique pain from these wars that we must acknowledge as well and that is the extremely high suicide rate among these veterans. As of July 2021, 30,177 have taken their own lives. That's over 4 times as many as those who died in combat. The demons of war alway...

  Upscale home you want for $500,000                                       Home you get for $500,000 - in Robbinsdale Have you thought much about the adjective "upscale?" as it's used today? Probably not - why would you?! - but a couple recent articles in the Star Tribune got me thinking about it. Here, let me bore you with my thoughts. The first article was about why homes were so expensive to build (Apr 21.) As the commenters note, builders can’t really build affordable homes profitably (for a lot of reasons, allegedly) so they build “upscale” homes. “Upscale.” Is it just me or does it seem like everything is going/gone upscale? I mean you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an upscale store, restaurant, house or apartment complex. Really, you never hear, "Hey, we're building a plain, average apartment building, come on down!" Or "There's a new restaurant in town - no artisanal 12 g...