A few random thoughts

I’m not a big Olympics fan, but I find myself watching bits and pieces of the games because I guess I feel obligated.

I’m a traditionalist when it comes to Olympic sports. I have trouble accepting skateboarding and breakdancing in the Olympics. They certainly take more overall athletic ability than a large man throwing a 16-pound ball of steel. As for myself, I can neither break dance, skateboard nor throw a 16-pound shot farther than a foot.

Skateboarding is dominated by teenagers. The winner of Olympic skateboarding was a 14-year-old Japanese girl. A lot of gymnasts are young, but not that young. The youngest medal winner ever was a 10-year-old Greek boy who won a bronze (third) in gymnastics in 1886, the first year of the modern Olympics.

Twirling ribbons is another old Olympic sport I’ve never understood. Also curling in the winter Olympics.

I’ve also never been a big Celine Dion fan, but the French Canadian singer nailed it at the end of the opening ceremonies Friday night with her emotional rendition of Edith Piaf’s stirring anthem, “Hymn to Love.” It was Dion’s first public performance in two years after being struck in 2022 by the very rare neurological disease, stiff-person syndrome, which causes seizures and loss of voice. Dion’s travails with the disease are shown in the excellent Amazon Prime documentary, “I Am: Celine Dion.”

ONE OF the dumbest decision as in the history of law was rendered last week by the Ohio Supreme Court. In a head-scratching 4-3 vote, the justices ruled that diners in Ohio shouldn’t expect chicken wings advertised as boneless to be actually boneless. The case arose when a customer in a restaurant got a two-inch chicken bone caught in his throat while eating what were supposed to be boneless chicken wings.

He was taken to a hospital where the bone was removed, then he had to undergo two subsequent surgeries to repair damage to his esophagus from the bone. He sued the restaurant and the company that supplied the supposedly boneless chicken.

A lower court had ruled that when a restaurant advertises boneless chicken wings, diners have a reasonable expectation that the wings are indeed bone-free. But the Supreme Court — in a ruling that defies logic and common sense — said no, you can’t expect boneless chicken wings to be boneless despite what the menu says.

So much for truth in advertising. And common judicial sense.

THE WALL STREET Journal on Monday reported the sale of the most expensive house in Iowa — Tom and Molly Bedell’s West Lake Okoboji mansion. The sale price was $9.5 million.

The 25,000 square foot eight bedroom house with 178 feet of lake frontage was built in the early 2000s. It has been for sale for about 10 years with an original asking price of $15 million. One of its features is an authentic Irish pub modeled after real Dublin pubs. It also includes a movie theatre.

The buyers have not been identified other than they are from the Midwest.

Bedell made his fortune when he sold the family fishing gear company, founded by his father Berkley in Spirit Lake, to Pure Fishing in 2007.

The previous sales record for an Iowa home was also on West Okoboji, for $5.6 million in 2022.

THANKS TO city crews who picked up branches from yards across town Tuesday and Wednesday after a wild Monday night storm wreaked havoc on our community’s trees. We had a couple large branches that were felled by the high winds that peaked at 56 miles per hour around 1 a.m. Tuesday in Storm Lake.

A huge branch split off from a tree and blocked the entrance to First Baptist Church on Lake Avenue in Storm Lake. Another large branch fell across a driveway and on top of a car in the 500 block of Geneseo Street, damaging the vehicle.