Benning Printing & Publishing

My friend Bella Rowan just published her first ever novel on Amazon. Bella writes small-town, clean romance. I am not much of a romance fan personally, but I am a fan of my friend and her writing is really good. And, she is writing about a small central Minnesota town so it feels like this could be about a town nearby. There are many great books out there to read and this will hopefully be one of them. The name of her book is Pine Hollow Welcome, and yes, I told her it wa

I would like to think that I am smarter because of Artificial Intelligence (AI). I mean, if I don’t know something, I can ask AI to help me find the answer. For example, I didn’t know when Mardi Gras was celebrated. So I asked my AI assistant when it was. It went on to tell me not only when it was, but also what it was. I find that a lot of time my assistant (I call him Buddy) tells me much more than I want to know. Sometimes I have to tell him to back off and tell me less b

This prompt is a really good one and is one of my favorites from the past month that I have used. Now, this one does actually require that you have used your AI tool for some time so that it can answer the questions being asked. Here is the prompt and I will include what my Buddy (my name for my ChaptGPT tool) came up with. This is the exact prompt to use: ROLE: You are an expert psychologist with a keen eye for spotting human patterns. OBJECTIVE: Based on everything you

I hear people talk about using ChatGPT or other AI tools all the time. They will say, “Well, I asked ChatGPT and it said this or that thing about this or that subject.” I listen quietly. Because there is something that I know about ChatGPT and other AI tools that many people do not know, and if they do know it, they don’t always believe it. ChatGPT lies. There, I said it. And we’ll have to see if the computer blows up before the night is over, because I will have ChatGPT

Taxation without representation is not a thing of the past. But what does it really mean? Legally and historically, the phrase has a narrower definition. But the meaning I am getting at is more than just voting—it is about meaningful representation. If you: 1. Pay taxes 2. Follow laws 3. Fund public systems yet feel that your lived realities, values or needs are consistently ignored or overridden, then representation only exists on paper—not in practice. But first, let’

Distractions… We are surrounded by distractions. They pull our attention away from what is really important and from what is actually going on. I have felt this over and over again for the past few years, but especially this past year. It seems like everything is a distraction—TV, the Internet, everything. There is a lot going on in the world, and in Minnesota alone, to make things unsettling for people who are used to the “nothing ever happens here” mentality. That was

I spent last week in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had never been there before, but it wasn’t my first foray into big city life, having gone to Nashville, Tennessee, for the first time in September of 2025. The two cities were built on very different things—one on music and one on gambling. But really, they were very similar. Both had millions of people living in the city or in connecting suburbs. Both had grown exponentially over the past 20–40 years, and both were built on hope. L

It’s a new year. 2026. I never thought I would see it. But here it is with all its potential for being the best year yet! Every year has this potential. It’s like January arrives and we suddenly are filled with all the ideas and thoughts about things we want to accomplish in the new year. And then, about a week or a month later a whole lot of people either forget about their goals or simply do not have the drive or ambition to carry through with their plans. According to Dr

A few years ago, I wrote about my friend Stacey Kananen. She and her family lived in the Clarissa area, and we were classmates for a few years—from about second grade until around fifth or sixth grade. After Stacey and her family left without saying a word (her mom, Marilyn, had worked in the office at the Central Todd County Care Center), we kept in contact for a while, but eventually we lost touch. Another friend helped me reconnect with Stacey years later when Jerene (Pe

I turned 60 on Sunday. For the most part it was just like every other day of the last year it just had a different name. What was different was the mindset that came with the event that wasn’t very eventful. I spent a lot of time thinking and pondering what, if anything, turning 60 meant. Was I supposed to have some big epiphany and suddenly see clarity? Was I supposed to evaluate my entire life and my decisions and come to some groundbreaking conclusion? Turns out, 60 is