Delano Herald Journal

Serving the communities of Delano, Loretto, Montrose, MN, and the surrounding area

Lynda Jensen Column, 6/3/02



Here’s a suggestion for the Waverly City Council: it should
videotape its meetings.

Videotaping meetings will hold council members and the
mayor accountable for what is said during the meetings, but will also allow
people to compare the newspaper coverage and the taped meetings, to see
what differences there are as well.

It would be good for all of us.

Videotaping meetings will also allow the taxpayers to be
directly informed, when they are too busy to attend (which is everybody,
all of the time, in this busy age).

Many other towns in this area ­ Howard Lake, Buffalo,
Dassel and Cokato tape their council meetings and broadcast them on public
TV. The Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted school district also tapes its meetings.

In fact, HLWW students are involved in the taping of local
meetings, where they learn about the field of broadcasting. Some go on
to successful careers in that industry as the result of taping Howard Lake
city council and HLWW board meetings.

You must have cable TV to get the meetings, but some people
I know actually subscribe to basic cable, just to get them.

Riding around like Grandma Clampett

I bought two lovely wooden lawn chairs recently.

First, I had to haul them home from Howard Lake to Dassel,
riding around town with two chairs barely strapped to my trunk.

I told Dean Smith that I was going to ride on top my car
like Grandma Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies.

I picked up some stain and varnish at the hardware store
and rolled home.

When I got there, I showed them to my son, Bryce.

Two minutes later, I passed him walking out the door with
a screwdriver. “Whatcha doing?” I said.

“I’m going to open the paint can to help you,”
he said. Can’t turn down that kind of help from a 6-year-old.

We still have stain marks on our arms and legs, even though
we did this weeks ago!

The next day, Bryce found a tick on our dog.

“Oh,” I said. “We have to get some Vaseline
to get him out.”

(Have you ever tried that trick? It works. Simply dab
Vaseline around the tick (if its head is in good), and wait about 30 seconds.
Then give it a tug. The tick can’t breathe with Vaseline around it, and
it has to back out for a bit. That’s when you yank it out.)

So, we climbed into the car after I explained this to Bryce.

Bryce yelled at Latrice “TRICE WE’RE GOING TO THE
STORE TO GET SOME GASOLINE FOR THE DOG.”

“No,” I said. “Vaseline, not gasoline.”

We laughed all the way to the drug store about toasted
wiener dog and crispy critters because our dog is a miniature daschund.

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