For some time this region has been looking for a stronger economy and healthy job market with jobs that pay a good salary and make it possible to provide for a family. Prosperity seems to be just around the corner. There is a demand for good and healthy workers. Unfortunately it is difficult to find people who can pass a drug test to fill those positions.

Your children may comfort you with words like, “You’re only as old as you feel,” but the fact is, everyone ages. The senior years – also known as the Golden Years – bring challenges. Of course, as youth, the road of life stretches out way ahead with lots of time to think about old age and related issues at some later date. In the middle years the focus is on raising the family, obtaining the things you need and desire and working toward retirement. Before you know it, time has passed and if you haven’t begun to plan your senior years, you are there and know that you can’t procrastinate any longer.

When someone says, “No,” it doesn’t mean “yes” or “maybe.” It means emphatically, “No.” When a person is forced or manipulated into unwanted sexual activity without their consent – and this includes persons who are unable to give consent or not – that is sexual violence. “The absence of no is not a yes.”

What did people do before cell and smart phones, those little things so many of us think we just can’t live without? When we are driving we need to curb the distractions and focus on what we are doing because the human brain was never really intended to multitask. Is there a telephone call or text message that is really worth a human life?

Michelle and the baby get up about 7 a.m. She already is on the phone with her best friend and as they talk she scans through Facebook while the toddler plays in the dog’s water bowl.