It was a dark and stormy and hot and beautiful Dodge County Fair.

Last week I talked about what you shouldn’t bring up with strangers: politics.
So this week I’m going to compensate for that by writing about something everyone can talk about: our weather.
The skies looked ominous most of the afternoon, but I didn’t think it would be this bad.
It’s Wednesday, July 19, and it seems like all of Dodge County is in a tornado warning until 6 p.m. this evening.

Both sides of my family kind of contradict themselves. I’d say it has much less to do with my extended family and more to do with my mother and father.
Mom loves Greek food; dad hates Greek food. Mom hates roller coasters; dad loves roller coasters. Mom doesn’t like the outdoors; dad loves the outdoors.

The 160th-annual Dodge County Fair attracted the masses - hundreds of people eager for fun and food here in high summer in good ol’ southeast Minnesota.
Holy cow, the fun: from 4-H judging and bull-riding to hot music to a demolition derby to the talent show, milkshake shoot-out, all those carnival rides, and displays by people like Roger Abrahamson, the old-time bowl-turner.

As I drove around Dodge County surveying storm damage July 19, I came across a grieving woman.
For me, emotion got in the middle of doing my job as a journalist.
It was a tough night for Darlene Schmidt of Owatonna as she stared at serious damage to her son’s turkey barns north of Claremont. Straight line winds whipped into the area, causing thousands of dollars in damages to the barns and knocking out power.

Holy Trinity Catholic Church of Litomysl will be showing off its country church pride at its 46th Annual Summer Festival on Sunday, July 30.  
The 140 families of the parish will host the event which is one of the largest summer parish festivals held in Minnesota each year. The country style festival draws people from a wide population in southeastern Minnesota.  

The Dodge County Sheriff has confirmed his office is investigating a possible tornado touchdown Wednesday afternoon north of Claremont.
Sheriff Scott Rose told the DCI that emergency management director Matt Maas will be surveying damage with weather officials to determine if it was a tornado that touched down on the Kent Schmidt turkey farm about two miles north of Claremont near the Steele-Dodge border.

The Owatonna Huskies Bullpen Club in partnership with Youth 1st, The Walser Foundation, Federated Insurance, Jostens, Pearson, Cashwise, Bennerotte & Associates and the Minnesota Twins Community Fund have selected the Mantorville KoMets Baseball Team as the recipient of a Youth 1st Team Award for their outstanding sportsmanship during the 2017 Owatonna Tournament.

In Minnesota, the softball season can be one filled with wet and cold weather as teams try to hack it out over a two month period to gure out which team is the best in the state. Because of the post-ponements and quick nature of games, the softball season seems to fly by in the spring and most of the refinements of a player’s game takes place over the summer months.