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Opinion

A message for men over 50

Columns

The diagnosis was not a surprise — well, yes it was, because like many men with a health issue we try to deny it, or delay treatment when everyone knows that “early detection” is critical to a cure. My PSA (prostate-specific antigen) had been slowly creeping upward for the last two years. When it reached 9.0 along with a Gleason score of 9, my doctor said it was time to do something about it. This meant a prostate biopsy. It came back positive for a cancerous tumor pressing against my rectal wall. Two options were explained to me — a complete removal of the gland, or radiation ...

Arthurdale’s New Deal experiment, and the debate over socialism

Columns

ARTHURDALE, West Virginia — The road into this quiet Preston County community gives little warning that it was once the setting for one of the New Deal’s most ambitious, and most debated, experiments. Ninety-three years ago, Arthurdale became the first experimental community established under the federal subsistence-homesteads program, an effort to help impoverished families move from unstable industrial areas into planned rural communities. The idea was that residents could combine wage work with gardens, livestock and small-scale home production. First lady Eleanor Roosevelt ...

Dear Annie: No place for mom guilt in a partnership

Columns

Dear Annie: I have a 9-year-old son from a previous relationship and a 3-year-old daughter with my current partner. He is a wonderful, involved father and partner. He makes lunches, does laundry, cleans up after dinner, helps with bedtime and will often notice something needs to be done before I even ask. The strange part is that instead of simply appreciating the help, I sometimes feel guilty about it. I grew up in a home where my mother did almost everything. My father worked hard, but housework and taking care of the children were considered her responsibility. Somewhere along the ...

Dolly Parton

Letters to the editor

Jim Newton Itasca, Ill. Dolly Parton will be missed for many reasons, but don’t forget her guitar playing skills. A 1979 YouTube clip shows her effortlessly playing an acoustic guitar wearing acrylic nails on her right (picking) hand. I’ve been playing guitar for decades and can’t do it with natural nails. Dolly and Glen Campbell were such complete performers that people overlooked their guitar playing. It’s heartening to see so many non-country music artists like John Mayer paying tribute to Parton. She bridged a lot of gaps. Is that gift still transferrable to ...

Those with sleep apnea might need to urinate more than others

Columns

DEAR DR. ROACH: I’m writing regarding the recent column that mentioned frequent nighttime urination. I had a similar problem and awakened several times to urinate each night. About a year ago, I started using a CPAP for sleep apnea. Immediately after starting to use the CPAP, my nighttime urination frequency decreased. It’d range from sleeping completely through the night to waking up twice, with an average of waking up once per night. Building off a prior column, my hypothesis was that better sleep led to a more stable production of the natural diuretic that the body makes at ...

Dolly Parton was rich in all the right ways

Columns

One of the unfortunate realities of getting older is finding that the people you like begin to die. There are some, maybe, who are taken before their time and others who go at the end of a complete life, but either way the obituaries pile up. When Dolly Parton died the other day, I felt the weight of another passing. I never met her, but she represented more to me (and to many others, I imagine) than her songwriting, her acting and her singing. I saw in her the way poverty can shape a person — slash their outsides and scar them in ways that never fully heal — while still failing to ...