I have to admit I cringed a little bit when I changed the dates of the newspaper this week. I even had to check my calendar to make sure I didn’t accidentally jump ahead a week. Now that Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson conquered space, maybe their next project can be creating a time machine. 

August, I thought to myself on Wednesday morning. Like it’s seriously August.

It seems like summer just started and now we are preparing our kids for going back to school. 

Maybe I am the only one, but summer has really flown by this year. Perhaps it’s because we really didn’t do a whole lot last year. I mean think about it, how many summer celebrations did you go to? Did you go on a trip? Have to bring your kid into practice for baseball four days a week? 

I’m not sure if this summer is necessarily more busy than in years past, or if we just got used to taking a more relaxed approach to our craziness in Minnesota—you know cramming a years worth of stuff into 10 weeks (the last two weeks of August don’t count if you have children in school). That being said I don’t know if I ever really had a chance to get used to the idea of there being a summer in the first place. Between all of the activities with our kids, we had softball 1-2 nights a week between the different leagues, swimming lessons, summer rec, town festivals just about every weekend and who knows what else, it seems like summer just began.

On the positive side as I pointed out to someone last week, August is a five week month so hopefully that will drag on a bit longer and give us a chance to enjoy a bit of the summer months without the hectic nature of July. 

Smoke cologne

When I was in college I spent several years working at Herbergers at the Fargo, N.D. mall (trust me it wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds). I find it a bit ironic as I am sitting in my flip flops, baggy shorts and a t-shirt writing this column at work, that I once had to wear a tie and dress clothes to work each day.

When I worked at Herbergers when things got slow I spent a lot of time in the fragrance department, which was right next to mine and noticed they literally had a fragrance or cologne for everything. Peaches, berries, your favorite athletes, just about anything you can imagine—with the exception of campfire. 

After spending the past few days inside due to the smoke from the Canadian fires I can see why. The second you open up the door of your house the smoke comes in and doesn’t leave. 

If you think about it, very few people walk away from a campfire when one is going by the lake, but I think we care more about the shenanigans that is going on around the fire than the actual fire itself. Doubt me? Go stand outside for a few minutes and tell me how much you like smelling like a bon fire.

So while you might not be purchasing a campfire cologne or perfume, I did find these unusual fragrances on Business Insider that might trip your trigger: lobster cologne, mustang cologne (new car smell), Flame by BK (smell like a whopper/flame-broiled meat), scent of a Macbook Pro (you know the computer) and Benedict (yes apparently the Vatican has commissioned a celebrity perfume-maker to create a fragrance for Pope Benedict). 

Back to the smoke though, I wonder if anyone has an old strobe light they aren’t using anymore. It might be kind of fun to take it outside and see if we can have a dance party out back. You wouldn’t even need a smoke machine it has already been already provided. 

Regional coverage

You may have noticed some changes we have been making at the New York Mills Dispatch and Frazee-Vergas Forum. 

If you have been in the Forum office in the past few weeks you have likely noticed our new page designer Chris Haughn who is helping to lay out portions of the Forum and NY Mills Dispatch. He joined our staff at the beginning of June and also helps us on our new websites.

With the addition of Chris, we have freed up our editor in Frazee, Barbie Porter, and myself to do a bit more writing and regional stories. Anytime someone hears the words regional coverage that typically means our conventional local coverage takes a back seat. You see it all of the time in corporate America. 

The thing is, that isn’t happening here. Since we have restructured some of the job responsibilities we have freed up additional time to focus on news coverage. That means we might have some feature stories on Perham businesses or individuals, in addition to our typical amount of stories for the NY Mills Dispatch and Frazee-Vergas Forum.

The point is, nothing is really changing, except in a way it is by allowing us to have even more unique stories in these publications rather than canned stories that come out of larger communities nearby. Our local coverage will remain the same as it has in the past, we are simply adding a bit more regional coverage as well. 

We believe in local coverage and being a voice for our the communities we serve. If you ever have a concern don’t hesitate to give me a call, or stop by our office to chat.