Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 1294 - 1318 of 1718
Dear Editor, I am concerned that our way of government is being corrupted by those of us who are influenced by the “D,” “R” and “I” labels. In recent years, more and more voters in Nebraska use party labels as their only criteria for voting. Each political party has a reputation for leaning philosophically one way or another, and we can be swayed in our thinking, or lack of it, and vote the party line. This kind of “group think” clouds our best judgment in deciding who is the best candidate for the job. Those of us who vote, and there are f...
Dear Editor, The total owed on student loans in this country has now passed $1 trillion. The federal government will make a profit of at least $66 billion this year. Recently, the U.S. Senate took up a bill to allow some students to renew some higher rate loans so to lower their interest rate. It failed to pass. Have you wondered why you haven’t hear from the U.S. Surgeon General while this Ebola crisis continues? What do these two things have in common? Both of Nebraska’s U.S. Senators voted against the student loan bill. Why? We have not had...
Dear Editor, Recently my granddaughter interviewed me for a history project. Later, she told me I was the only one of her class interviewees who was hopeful for our future as a country. That made me sad, but not discouraged, especially as a Nebraskan. We are a state of thoughtful, hard-working citizens, and as a state and nation we have hard work to do. Our parties, as they exist, are not making acceptable progress. In the past, we in Nebraska have been able to ignore the “R” or” D” after the names and thoroughly examine what skills the peo...
Dear Editor, Having grown up in rural Nebraska, I certainly understand the appeal and affinity our rural residents have toward “Greater Nebraska.” No doubt I would love to move back to a setting where very much of my concerns as a Lincoln resident would diminish simply because rural lifestyle permits a more relaxed and subdued nature. I can’t condemn anyone for wanting what many Nebraskans know as “The Good Life” due to the obvious reason I’m a Nebraskan myself. So when I read an article in the Huffington Post about how a couple and their son f...
Dear Editor, President Obama, with the approval of Congress, has blundered ahead to fund and arm so called moderate Sunnis in Syria to fight the radical Sunnis in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This is a huge error because there are no moderate Sunnis. In the Middle East it is all about religion. The so called moderate Sunnis in Syria will turn the arms against President Assad of Syria and his Shiite followers. Their enemy is Assad and the Shiites, not the fellow Sunnis of ISIS. If they succeed in overthrowing Assad, the so called moderate Sunnis and I...
Dear Editor, This letter is in regards to junior high and high school athletics and the treatment of the kids who are the third- and fourth-stringers. Obviously, not all kids are equal talent-wise when it comes to school sports. It doesn’t mean the kids who are the third- and fourth-string are not trying as hard as the ones who start. I understand the overall goal is to win the game, but when the game is well out of hand on one side or another some of these other kids deserve to get in the game. The third- and fourth-stringers are out there g...
President Obama visited Stonehenge three weeks ago, on Friday, Sept. 5. As he stepped around the stones, he said, “ How cool is this. This is spectacular! Knocked this off my bucket list.” Stonehenge is located west and south of London, in south central England, and is a popular tourist destination site. It is astonishing to see. Prehistoric men, who lived on the British Isles then, stood a series of giant stones upright in a circle, and archaeologists believe that the first stones were pos...
Dear Editor, What’s there not to like about good music? The vast majority of the citizens of Cheyenne County missed hearing an exceptional musical event at the Sidney High School auditorium recently. The Dallas Brass was the headliner at a concert that included the Offutt AFB brass ensemble and all members of the Sidney school bands. Because the Offutt brass ensemble was having a travel day between concerts in two area towns, they were excited to be a part of the concert and perform with the Dallas Brass and our own students. This was a c...
Dear Editor, Since late 20111, America’s livestock producers have endured weather disasters such as historic droughts, blizzards, floods and fires, awaiting Congressional enactment of a farm bill so that disaster assistance could resume. When the 2014 Farm Bill was signed into law by President Obama in February, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack ensured that disaster programs were restarted in 60 days, by April 15, 2014. Five months later, USDA’s Farm Service Agency has approved more than 250,000 applications seeking assistance, exceeding Con...
Dear Editor, West Nile Virus just robbed our community of one of its finest citizens. We all have heard the admonition “protect yourself from mosquitos particularly in the evening hours,” but since West Nile is fairly uncommon, we tend to discount that advice until something like this gets our attention. Few cases of West Nile have been reported in the Panhandle and the symptoms are similar to a cold or flu at the onset so we tend to get careless. The onset of a freeze in the weather will soon end the life of the lowly mosquito, but a wet spr...
Although President Obama has ordered airstrikes on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Pentagon is saying that “further strikes are needed in both Iraq and Syria to stop the militants from regrouping.” Then, from the Red Square in Moscow, Putin has “slowly ramped up his meddling in Ukraine, and with just enough uncertainty around each incremental escalation” so as to evade a larger war or a threat from the United States or western Europe. Then, today marks the thirteenth anniver...
Dear Editor, Kudos to our city manager and economic development chief for the past 15-plus years. He has recently been honored for his stewardship, foresight and downright hard work in leading Sidney to the forefront of small communities particularly in economic development. I have known Gary since he first hit town as a reporter of the Scottsbluff Star-Herald and have supported him and worked with him on a number of projects. He seeks not notoriety nor honors but just seems to get the job done. We are so fortunate that competing offers from...
Dear Editor, Here recently, the code enforcement officer made a visit to my home about allegedly a dog chasing after the cats in the neighborhood. After a brief introduction, I asked the code enforcement officer why is it cats can roam wherever they want, but nothing is ever said about it? Well, a lot of the cats are feral, she replied. I asked her about the cats that weren’t feral, and then said maybe dogs wouldn’t run off if the cats weren’t allowed to roam around at will. For the nine years I have lived in my home, the cats in the neigh...
Robin Williams was born in 1951, and I in 1953. Due to his rapid-fire wit, his zany antics and his overabundance of comedic talents, success came quick for him, more so than it did for others of our generation. In 1978, when I was trying to teach English composition to seventh- and eighth-graders in Lodgepole, Williams starred in his own television show, Mork and Mindy. Instead of learning to appreciate a poem’s text, my students would chant “na-noo, na-noo” – Mork’s nonsensical catchphra...
There are a lot of things I’ll miss about Sidney and quite a few that I won’t. As I prepare to leave for a new job at the beginning of September and look back on my year here, I’ve learned a ton and met many people who I’ll never forget. When I arrived here, I was skeptical that I could make any friends and thought that everyone would probably hate me. But I’d like to thank the people of Sidney for (mostly) welcoming me and making me feel at home in what was once a strange and foreign place. I’ll miss working with all the local officials w...
In an effort to raise students’ educational levels across the globe, the Program for International Student Assessment, encourages hundreds of thousands of 15-year-old students from sixty-five countries to take a two-hour test that covers just three subjects: math, science, and reading. In 2012, 510,000 students completed the test, and the PISA test scores reveal sobering news. The Shanghai Chinese students won first place in all three subjects, and Peru’s students took last place in all three. T...
Please stop taking selfies. For those of you who don’t know, a selfie is a photo one takes of oneself, usually on a cellphone. These photos are generally close-up face shots of people going about their daily business and trying to convince Facebook friends that their lives are much more exciting than they are in reality. If you don’t take selfies discourage your kids, your grandkids, your co-workers and your neighbors to stop. If you see someone holding up his or her phone at a jaunty angle, making a pouty-face and trying to get the per...
Dear Editor, Having lived in Cheyenne County for over 30 years, I know dozens of reasons why it is a great place to live. One of those reasons was a blessing to me last Friday night at the Demolition Derby: honesty. I don’t know whom the people were who found and turned in my little card carrier to the authorities, but my sincere gratitude goes out to them. Unbeknownst to me, it had come out of my pocket and had fallen through the stands to the ground below. It is great to know that a child, and later another young person and adult took the t...
Dear Editor, The Table of Grace Mobile Food Pantry is again gathering school supplies to distribute to area families with back to school needs. 2014 marks the fifth year the pantry has distributed school supplies. The process with which we gather and distribute these supplies has evolved, however, the strong support and generosity of the Sidney community has been constant. Table of Grace depends on a variety of sources for school supplies including church groups, business groups and area residents. While the same groups or individuals don’t alw...
People are dying in the middle east. It’s news, but sadly, it’s not surprising. Our views on world events are shaped by our experiences. Because of that, I’m sure mine are different than yours. I am very far removed from the second world war. I was not alive when six million Jews were being slaughtered in the Holocaust and neither were my parents. Although watching footage and seeing photos of Holocaust survivors being liberated gives me a deep sense of shock and sorrow, I will never feel the same as those who saw those images in real time....
Dear Editor, As most of us realize, cell phone use has now replaced about one third of all land-lines that were in use in America just a few years ago. When 911 is called from a land-line, the exact location where that call is made from is known almost immediately. This is not the case with cell phone calls, especially when they are made inside a structure where their GPS location is masked. Critical information has to then be gathered by the 911 dispatcher, and in some critical circumstances, those seconds or minutes spent confirming where...
Dear Editor, “Ambulance service strives to cut hospital transports” seems to support Jim Jenson’s letter to the editor. I know the internal debate on whether to ask for help in the middle of the night. For future “should you call” decisions, I will always remember the scolding words, “nearly too late”, from an emergency room doctor during an asthma attack. Will Emergency Response Care consider if the patient lives alone and the distance from medical facilities when making their decisions on how to “cut hospital transports”? I was diagnosed wit...
Two boys were playing badminton, and because Andy played better than Bob, Andy won all the games. Bob threw down his racket, sat on a tree stump, and said, “I won’t play anymore.” So Andy suggested a different game. “Bob, let’s see how long we can keep the bird going between us and count how many times it goes back and forth without falling. Do you think we could make a score of ten or twenty?” Bob thought it a grand idea, and so the two boys resumed playing a cooperative game. From his office w...
I think everyone wants some acknowledgement for a job well done. It’s nice to hear praise, whether it’s for your exceptional flower bed this summer or a project that kept you late at the office last month. Everyone needs positive reinforcement once in a while, but I think sometimes people feel they deserve their own personal cheerleader, when that would be a little impractical. How awkward would that conversation be if she starts cheering while you’re on the phone? We’re not all basketball players and we don’t deserve an entire fan section just...
Dear Editor, This week marks the last that Dr. Cal Cutright will be treating patients at the Sidney Regional Medical Center. Forty-five years ago he was an outstanding athlete at Sidney High, then known as the “Maroons”. He furthered his education at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln where he was a ‘walk on’ player on the taxi squad of the UN football team. In his final year at Sidney High he joined the Sidney Men’s Chorus, later to be known as the Fort Sidney Colonels and participated in that group whenever he was in town until it disban...
