Happy Small Business Saturday!
I love my hometown. I’ll bet you like yours, too. One aspect of our local communities that makes them so special are the small businesses that line our highways and main streets. Those places where we gather together to enjoy good company or celebrate life’s special events, dine with family and friends, or pick up what we need to improve our lives and homes. Lifelong memories are made celebrating anniversaries over dinner with your spouse, getting ice cream with sons and daughters, bowling at the local alley, visiting over a cup of coffee, or running into old friends while filling your tank with gas.
We often tend to take our local businesses for granted, but it’s a bit of a small miracle that they even exist today. To begin, small business owners take a huge risk. They often take out loans to buy their land, store, and inventory. Ongoing insurance, utilities, and other overhead costs are increasingly expensive. Some small shop owners put up their family home for collateral to borrow the money. Many face extreme competition from online stores or large brick and mortar businesses in cities which offer vast inventories, more options, larger menus, and free shipping. But in spite of it all, our small-town, local businesses persist, and our lives are better for it.
But now, in the age of social media, small business owners face perhaps the biggest threat: the everyday prospect of public attack and ridicule on Facebook or Twitter because something didn’t go exactly right for a customer. These harsh criticisms are often leveled within small town Facebook groups where a large percentage of the people in the community are members. Well-meaning employees are thrown before the online community and personally attacked. Good and decent people’s reputations are tarnished. Young workers trying to gain experience in the working world are ridiculed. Hate and discord consume our public conversation. It’s a pretty dark status.
Our hometown small businesses need our support to survive. Soon, the risk of financial loss associated with running a business, along with the almost certain barrage of painful negative attacks might become overwhelming. Business might leave and not come back. If, one day, our small town main streets are lined with nothing but shuttered doors and empty display windows, and if one day, you are no longer able to take a short stroll for a nice dinner or movie, you might think, “what happened?” I assure you that the wrath of social media ridicule will have played a part.
So let’s be good to one another. Let’s thank those small businesses in our hometowns. Let’s appreciate what they do to make our lives better. Let’s be glad that they provide jobs and opportunity to their employees, even if the employees make mistakes every once and awhile. Let’s choose to be grateful, and we’ll all be better off for it. ... See MoreSee Less
November is National Adoption Month.
In my legal work I’ve had the privilege of representing families as their adoption attorney. Working alongside families through their adoption journey is a tremendous blessing. These adoptive moms and dads lovingly accept children into their lives and in turn give the immeasurable gifts of love, family, security, hope, and so much more.
Adopting a child can be an emotional and financial rollercoaster. Sometimes, for any number of reasons, adoptions don’t work out, and couples experience what are called “disruptions.” In the best case, a disruption occurs because the biological mother and father decide to be good parents for the child, and that alone is cause for rejoicing. But even in this best case, for the adoptive parents who have begun to form a deep emotional bond with the child, it can still be heartbreaking. Imagine being in their shoes, imagine being ready for the presence of a newborn child, but being left at home with a freshly painted baby’s room and an empty crib. Many of these families, however, heroically persist and continue to be open to adoption despite the emotional toll. They truly are heroes.
Adoptions are expensive too, but it is my hope that during this legislative session, our legislature, working with Governor Kristi Noem, will come together to provide resources to families to break down any financial barriers that exist which prevent good families from adopting children. If you feel called to adopt a precious child of South Dakota, then we as a state should stand ready to help you in every way that we can. Even in this nationwide, hyper-partisan, toxic political climate, I think that’s something we can all agree on. ... See MoreSee Less
