Editorial: Thumbs

To Shinefest.

Shinefest is a week of service where local people demonstrate a love for their community through work projects at schools, parks and more. Look to the Tribune Monday for a schedule of service projects and a story and photos from an early project at The Children’s Center in Albert Lea. Shinefest volunteers with and without roofing experience helped to re-do the roof that has been needed to be replaced.

The week of service isn’t intended to replace what local churches are doing to help the community, in fact, Shinefest organizers hope the week gets more churches to be involved in more service projects.

To the fair board, Post 56 American Legion Club and the Gatlin boys.

Every night before the Grandstand entertainment at the Freeborn County Fair, entertainment director Mike Woitas would invite the American Legion Color Guard to the foot of the stage to present the color. Woitas then asked the members of the audience to remove their caps and recite the Pledge of Alliance. This was gratifying to many audience members.

On the evening of the performance of Larry Gatlin & the Gatlin Brothers, Larry spoke his appreciation for what he witnessed and said that was the way to start entertainment at a fair.

We are sure this comment made the Legionnaires quite happy.

To cancer.

Boo! Hiss! This is a disease we have to beat. You have killed too many loved ones.

In fact, there has been good news in effort to beat cancer:

This past week, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania announced they had transformed the white blood cells of patients in the late stages of chronic lymphocytic leukemia into cells capable of annihilating cancer from within the body. Two of three patients in the study experienced full recovery and the third is in remission after one year.

Michael Kalos , the director of translational and correlative studies at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, said the results provide “a tumor-attack road map for the treatment of other cancers.”

The procedure is called adoptive T-cell transfer. In the field of cancer research, this is a big breakthrough in a fight that has been quite difficult.