Former Idaho Broadcaster Penne Main has an Axe to Grind

There used to be a claim Penne Main knew 20,000 people. It was a running joke around the office when she worked at our radio stations. She was a fixture of local radio and television for a very long time. She packed up and left and now serves as President of the Mini-Cassia Chamber of Commerce. Tony Morley, the City Administrator in Heyburn, has told me our loss was their gain!

Penne signed on with the new job not long before the pandemic hit. Somehow, she managed to steer through some difficult waters because it was a difficult time for membership. The role of the organization is to be a voice. In publicly promoting the benefits of shopping locally and in lobbying governments at all levels for the cause of local merchants.

As we may be going through the worst COVID could throw at us, a lot of people are looking to exhale. This is what I wanted to witness when I read the Mini-Cassia Chamber was going to have an after-hours event on what may turn out to be the last summer-like evening of the calendar year. I got to meet several business owners. These are people who work for a living and put in some long days, nights, and weekends.

As I was being introduced to some of these hard-working people, a fellow came over and handed Penne an axe. She stepped into something resembling a batting cage from Burly Axe and began tossing tomahawks. Now, this is Southern Idaho fun! She did better than some young men. One guy hit the top of the cage. Penne didn’t wedge the axe into the target, but she hit it straight. I could see her practicing all winter in her backyard.

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Many of the included towns jump out at the casual observer as popular summer-rental spots--the Ozarks' Branson, Missouri, or Arizona's Lake Havasu--it might surprise you to dive deeper into some quality-of-life offerings beyond the beach and vacation homes. You'll likely pick up some knowledge from a wide range of Americana: one of the last remaining 1950s-style drive-ins in the Midwest; a Florida town that started as a Civil War veteran retirement area; an island boasting some of the country's top public schools and wealth-earners right in the middle of a lake between Seattle and Bellevue; and even a California town containing much more than Johnny Cash's prison blues.

READ ON: See the States Where People Live the Longest

Stacker used data from the 2020 County Health Rankings to rank every state's average life expectancy from lowest to highest. The 2020 County Health Rankings values were calculated using mortality counts from the 2016-2018 National Center for Health Statistics. The U.S. Census 2019 American Community Survey and America's Health Rankings Senior Report 2019 data were also used to provide demographics on the senior population of each state and the state's rank on senior health care, respectively.

Read on to learn the average life expectancy in each state.