Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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The other day, I was out driving with my wife and daughters and the subject of British royalty came up. In my head, I teed up a funny anecdote about how, when I was 16, I literally bumped into the Queen of England. Long story, but she was a middle-aged monarch visiting the States, I was a brash teenager who didn’t respect barricades, and ... kismet. A long but good story. I turned to my wife and daughters and said, “ Did I ever tell you about the time ... “ Dead stares. My daughter rolled her eyes. “Are you going to tell us how you met the que...
It all started with a picture taken at the hospital shortly after the birth of our twin girls. Livvy and Catherine were a Caesarean birth, and as I was in the delivery room, I had to be outfitted in full surgeon regalia: scrubs, hat and mask. Afterward, one of the nurses asked if I’d like a picture with my two new daughters, and I agreed, sitting in a rocking chair with a tiny twin in each hand. The picture sits on the mantelpiece of the girls’ room. They never noticed it until one night when I had to convince one of them at bedtime to tak...
When my six-year-old daughter Catherine is acting up, all I have to say is “Knock it off, or Daddy’s gonna make pasta!” She actually likes pasta. (Other than peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese, it’s the only food she will eat.) It’s my making it that scares her. It started a few months ago, when we ordered a new pasta maker. We’ve had them in the past, mostly ordered off of Saturday infomercials, but they have always burned out after a couple of months. This time, my wife ordered a brand of pasta maker from Italy at the recommendat...
This past Sunday, I paged through the Real Estate section of the paper to see if we could find a home closer to my children’s orthodontist. Most people look for an easy commute to work or want to be near good schools. The way things have been going lately, most of our time (and money) seems to be spent in trying to keep our kids from growing up to look like hillbillies or the British royal family. I have five kids, all of whom have big beautiful teeth and small cramped jaws and will need some form of orthodontia (Latin for “torture of the mou...
You know how something isn’t really news, but suddenly, everywhere you look, there’s a story about it? I felt like this last week, when I saw headline after headline asking me whether I know how smart is my dog. This is all sparked by a new book called “The Genius of Dogs: How Dogs are Smarter Than You Think,” a groundbreaking work that provides evidence dogs are really, really good at reading their owners’ gestures and learning words. (When you write a book about it, it’s called a “groundbreaking work.” When you just look at your dog, wonde...
Let’s Get Mad, Men! A recent study published in the February issue of the American Sociological Review raised a whole lot of discussion last week. The study has been all over the Internet, where I found it (I canceled my subscription to the American Sociological Review years ago, when I realized I didn’t know what Sociology was). The study showed that husbands who help out with traditionally “wifely” chores have sex less often than more manly guys who stick to more traditional guy pursuits like cutting the grass, fixing the car and hammering aw...
In case you missed it (and it you did, you live in a cave) Notre Dame star linebacker Manti Te’o recently got himself in a whole lot of hot water after he received sympathy and attention by announcing that his girlfriend had died. When reporters later discovered that the girlfriend had never existed, Te’o claimed he’d been “catfished”, and that the girl was someone he’d met, and fell in love with, without ever actually seeing in person. The entire relationship was over the Internet. Catfishing is a relatively new term, and basically m...
As I write this column, I am getting ready to cut the cord. In a day or so, I am gathering my courage, picking up the phone and telling my cable provider to go jump in a lake. We live in a hilly area where TV signals don’t get all that far, so without cable, we get one station and only once in a while. Three years ago, we upgraded to one of those package deals where the cable company provides all of our electronic entertainment needs for one low, low monthly price. Because it was such a low, low price, we signed up for a whole slew of movie c...
This past Sunday night, we faced a bit of a dilemma in our house. The English drawing room, cucumber sandwich and Earl Grey tea sipping drama, “Downton Abbey,” was scheduled to return for its third season, while at the same time, on another channel, was the dirty, dumb hillbilly reality show, “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo!” Halloween special. My wife was torn. I did not have a dog in this hunt. My wife controls the remote, so for the most part we watch TV shows where women try on wedding dresses, couples go apartment shopping and housewi...
When we sell our house, I will tell the realtor to advertise the house as having six bedrooms and two and a quarter baths. That’s because a full bath is one with a bathtub, a sink, and a completely working toilet. A half bath is one with a sink and a completely working toilet. A quarter bath is what we have off our kitchen. The first two bathrooms came with the house when it was built in 1917. The powder room off our kitchen came a couple years later and is attached the sewer line via 35 feet of horizontal sewer pipe. The pipe has developed c...
If you are reading this column, I have good news for you: the world didn’t end Friday. In case you missed it, a lot of folks were worried it would. All of this is because of an old Mayan calendar. The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, created by Mayans in 3114 BC and carved into stone, contains entries for every single day from that time right up until December 21, 2012. Then it simply stops. The Mayans may have simply run out of symbols or stone, or broke their chisel at that point, or they may have been trying to give us a warning, but as a...
Regular readers of this column (otherwise known as shut-ins) will know that for years, we had a scruffy, disgruntled West Highland Terrier named Harry. Harry and I did not get along, mostly because Harry loved my wife, and I loved my wife, and both of us wanted to spend time with her. Harry saw it as his mission to get there first, and because he was often faster than I was, he’d be snuggled up with her on the couch or bed when I came in the room, growling at me if I got too close. My wife thought this was hilarious, and spent many evenings c...
