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Sunday Night
MaryHelen Swanson, editor

All day Iíve been pondering what I will write tonight, because this has been a difficult week, actually nearly two weeks now.
I will begin with a sincere apology to the residents of Rush Lake, particularly the members of the lake association who continue to work toward a clean, healthy lake. Your comments, along with my observations have led me to do some investigation which I hope will provide a few answers for us all. For now, please accept my apology if I have offended anyone.
Iíve really been missing my mother lately, sheís been gone now for four years. She always had the right words and solid answers for any situation, and at the end of three or four hours of visiting, she could make me believe we had solved all the problems of the world. I would like to talk with her once again. Most recently, trying to understand and get passed the untimely death of an acquaintance has been difficult. Taking a day off midweek and traveling up north to a favorite vacation spot was supposed to help. But it poured all the way up, all the while I was there, and all the way home.
The extreme weather this summer has also been more than just a source of aggravation.Heat and humidity and I donít agree much any more. It has been difficult to sleep at night. Sometimes, when weíre very tired, things are more difficult to comprehend. It is at those times the natural disasters of the world, manís inhumanity to man and peopleís pain appears more than we can handle. Itís been kind of like that for me.
I know we have to work past these things and move forward, and thatís what I intend to do.
Underway as you read this is a delightful tradition of summer- our county fair. It usually comes with hot days and cool nights, with bright lights, excitement, anticipation, laughter, greetings from neighbors we never see and rewards for hard work done all through the year. Itís one of the nicest parts of summer here in Chisago County. I hope you get to enjoy some of it.
Finally, Saturday is the anniversary of manís walk on the moon, July 20, 1969. Do you remember what you were doing at the time? My husband and I moved to Rush City July 19 and our belongings were stacked in boxes all around our home. We didnít have a working television at the time, so we abandoned our unpacking and frantically ran around looking for a TV we could afford on which to view this most magnificent event in manís history.
As the moment approached, I gathered my 21-month-old daughter and her three-month-old sister in my arms and settled in front of our small set.
I remember telling them how important this moment was as I pointed to the screen and held my tiny infant up to view the events on the surface of a moon so many miles away. Up until then, the only moon theyíd heard about was associated with a jumping cow and his friends, the dish and the spoon. Back then we had visions of self-contained communities springing up on this foreign soil, places that would provide sanctuary for humans because we believed we would soon overcrowd ourselves right off the earth.Visions of space stations and Jetson-like households filled our heads. We could barely contain our thoughts as to where this remarkable event would lead us.
And so it is 33 years later and the moon is still safe from manís habitation. Once a month the man who lives there seems to smile down at us in appreciation for that fact. And while a few astronauts spend time in capsules floating around in the atmosphere over our earth, the heavens are also relatively safe from us for now.
Whether youíre working past things or not, these are things you can do this week: participate in a 130-year-old tradition at the fairgrounds in Rush City and think about what you were doing when man kicked his first stone into the craters of the moon.

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