Twenty hours in the car, 20 hours at the hotel and 20 hours at the wedding and reception with family describes this past weekend.

Weddings are a great time to get together and we are very happy for my sister Elaine and her entire family on the wedding of our niece, Jeanette, in St. Paul, Minn., this past Saturday afternoon.

The weather couldn’t have been better for the reception that followed in a nearby park. If they even come close to following what the priest said to them at the ceremony they will be fine.

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Our other niece, Gloria, sang in a trio with a few friends at the reception and put on a great medley of tunes from the ’60s. The food was catered by the new boyfriend of one of the singers who is a chef at one of Minne­apolis’ finer spots downtown. It was fantastic, and it was rum­ored he agreed to prepare the food to impress his new girlfriend.

Mission accomplished.

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I am still mesmerized by the wind farms located between Ames and Mason City, Iowa. To me they are a stunning sight.

It puzzles me why people in our area don’t pursue this new technology and income stream it provides. I read where they can produce about $6,000 per year apiece. Ten or 20 of these on the home place would be much better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Plus one can still farm the land below.

They couldn’t help but increase the value of the property based on income stream. It’s even better than CRP, which lasts for 10 years at a time and could end at some point. We’ll need the electricity forever, I think.

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We said we would suggest solutions for the jail problem facing our county. The logic that it is a good idea for other counties to send their prisoners to us would seem to work both ways. It might be a good idea, in order to solve our jail problem, to send our prisoners to another county.

We read last week that Butler County is begging for prisoners in their pay-to-stay prison, cutting the rate to as low as $30 per day. Chase County would be another option.

With modern technology, which includes video conferencing, arraignments could be conducted over the Internet with the prisoners not needing to be brought to our courthouse.

Even BTK was arraigned from the prison via video and not brought to the courthouse.

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The dispatcher’s office could be moved to another location within the county, removing its employees from a less-than-ideal situation within the confines of the current jail building.

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I would like to see our efforts on the county level directed more to solving the road conditions throughout the county, where the investment would have a positive economic impact on our businesses and citizens.

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Tell me if I am off course, but here is a principle I apply to my gasoline purchases: I always buy at home if possible; if I can’t buy it at home, then at a station in Marion County; if that isn’t possible then I buy it somewhere in Kansas.

The reason? The taxes collected benefit our city, county or state in some way. If bought out of state, absolutely not one penny comes back to us unless as part of the federal highway program through federal gas taxes. But its impact is much, much less.

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