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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In September of 1796, President George Washington published a remarkable document, his farewell address “to the People of the United States on his declining of the Presidency.” After two terms as president, he was exhausted, tired of public service, and eager to return to his beloved Virginia plantation at Mount Vernon. When asked to serve a third term, he refused, and six months later he would retire and turn over the president’s duties to John Adams. In his farewell address, Washington liste...
Late in 1984, the calypso singer Harry Belafonte decided to raise funds for the famine-starved Ethiopians in Africa. First, he approached Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie and asked them to write a song. Then, he asked several dozen of the biggest musical artists in the country to assemble in a studio one night and sing Jackson and Richie’s song. The resulting album and video’s sales Belafonte would turn over to United Support of Artists for Africa, or USA for Africa, a non-profit fou...
An article appeared in the New York Times two weeks ago, “Jane Austen’s Guide to Alzheimer’s.” In it, Carol J. Adams described her difficult days caring for her mother, who had lost the battle to Alzheimer’s. For solace, Carol listened to a recorded book, Jane Austen’s “most-perfect novel,” Emma. Carol identified with the novel’s main character, Emma Woodhouse, who felt trapped and housebound as she cared for an ailing parent, her father, Henry Woodhouse. “When a slight dusting of snow ala...
“What can you say about a 25 old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.” So begins Oliver Barrett IV in Erich Segal’s novel, Love Story. Oliver is a rich, white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, pre-law student at Harvard who plays ice hockey for the Crimson. Jennifer Cavilleri is an Italian-American Radcliffe student, who plays music. She is from Cranston, R.I., where her father, makes pastries. She works in Radcliffe’s library, wh...
In the book, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, the book’s author Nassim Nicholas Taleb describes the people in Lebanon, his native country. It was, he writes, “an example of coexistence,” “a mosaic of cultures and religions,” a place where “people learned to be tolerant” of others, and where “the terms balance and equilibrium were often used.” The Lebanese people believed themselves blessed. Their climate was Mediterranean, of course, and their citizens were sophisticated, re...
The Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapped 19-year-old Patty Hearst, a sophomore at the University of California, Berkley, on Feb. 4, 1974. For the next 57 days, this small-time urban guerrilla organization detained Patty in a studio apartment’s closet, dressed only in her bathrobe. They beat her, abused her, changed her name to Tania, and brainwashed her. She helped with a bank heist. When given a chance to flee, she chose to stay. Long after the core SLA members perished in a gunfight with p...
The Chinese people felt an immediate sense of relief last Thursday when their government stated that it will permit married couples now to have two children. The government’s one-child policy has created “a demographic nightmare,” and its leaders now must address the glaring side-effects of that policy: a diminished work force, an aging population, and a shortage of marriageable women. It was on September 25, 1980, thirty-five years ago, that China’s leaders tried to rein in China’s galloping...
Hollywood just released two biographical movies. The first was on Bobby Fischer entitled Pawn Sacrifice, and the other was on Steve Jobs, entitled Steve Jobs. Fischer’s passion was chess, but Jobs’ was computers and marketing. Chess experts now consider Fischer one of the three greatest chess players ever, and Jobs revolutionized the personal computer industry. A certain level of mystery surrounds both Jobs’ and Fischer’s births. Fischer was the older, born in March 1943 in Chicago. His mother,...
Mel Blanc was known as “the man with a thousand voices” because he created voices for numerous cartoon characters. For Warner Brothers, Mel was the voice of Wile Coyote, Speedy Gonzales, Pepe LePew, Foghorn Leghorn, Yosemite Sam, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, Porky Pig, Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny. “What’s up, doc?” Then, for Hanna Barbera, he was Barney Rubble and Cosmo Spacely. On occasion, Mel also appeared on Jack Benny’s television program.” In one classic routine, Mel would wear a wide-b...
Yogi Berra played catcher for the New York Yankees for 19 years, from 1946 until 1965. Noted for his funny expressions, such as, “It ain’t over ‘till it’s over,” and “I didn’t say everything I said,” his most quoted malapropism is the gem, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Yogi said that when he was giving directions to his house during a conversation he had with Joe Garagiola. Yogi meant that from that fork in the road, either way led to his house, but his words came out funn...
Two historic events occurred on Sept. 11. The first was at Brandywine Creek, west of Philadelphia, in 1777, and the second was Sept. 11, 2001. In the first, General George Washington’s ragtag army tried to stop General William Howe’s superior troops from taking Philadelphia, the city where the Second Continental Congress convened. Washington’s army failed when Howe outflanked Washington and forced American troops to flee the battlefield. The terrified delegates to the Second Continental Congr...
“Life is a lot like jazz,” said George Gershwin. “It is best when you improvise.” During the 2004 political debates, the radio host Don Imus described the two vice presidential candidates Dick Cheney and John Edwards as “Dr. Doom and the Breck Girl,” because Cheney appeared glum, dour, like a bulldog, whereas Edwards appeared well coiffed, “like a pretty girl in a shampoo ad.” A journalist in Florida named Roy Peter Clark then riffed on Don Imus’s comment. Riff is a jazz term that describes im...
“Miss! Miss! Why do you keep calling this a school?” asked Ashley. “This is not a school!” It was an awkward moment, at an assembly, in November 2002. Because a fight had broken out that morning, the school’s new principal, an angry Linda Cliatt-Wayman, called all the students and staff to the auditorium where she hoped to present her expectations for the students’ behavior and for their achievement. Ashley, a student, interrupted her with the chilling words, “This is not a school!” Fast...
On Saturday afternoon, July 18, President Barack Obama and his two daughters, Malia and Sasha, were pleased to attend the new musical based upon Alexander Hamilton’s life, Hamilton. The popular play moved to Broadway, to the Richard Rodgers Theater, on July 13, after it received rave reviews off-Broadway. It is the brain-child of the gifted lyricist and hip-hop musician Lin-Manual Miranda, 35 years old, of Puerto Rican descent, who wrote the songs and stars in the lead as Alexander Hamilton. M...
In the spring of 1594, 26 London actors joined together to create an acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men. These actors included London’s leading dramatic actor at the time, Richard Burbage; plus Will Kempe, London’s leading comic actor; as well as Richard Cowly, William Slye, John Heminges, Alexander Cooke, Henry Condell, and the 30-year-old actor from the small town Stratford-on-the-Avon, William Shakespeare. He, as well as the others, were most fortunate, because this acting compa...
In 2002, multi-millionaire Jay Walker designed and built his Library of Human Imagination. Located in Ridgefield, Conn., Walker’s 3,600-square-foot home stores and displays his collection of books – more than 50,000 volumes – plus his myriad of museum-quality artifacts. It is both library and museum. Wired magazine wrote that “it is the most amazing library in the world,” and after seeing pictures and videos of it, I agree. First, Walker drew his inspiration for the library’s floor tile from t...
On Sunday, June 25, 1950, North Korean bombs fell on Seoul, South Korea’s capital, and the civil war began. It ended three years later, on July 27, 1953, with the same division as it had begun, with the Korean peninsula divided into two parts at the 38th parallel, communist to the North and a democratic-republic to the South. South Koreans now call the war, “the 6-2-5 Upheaval,” but the North Koreans call it “the Fatherland Liberation War,” even though no fatherland was ever liberated. In 2011, Suki Kim, a Korean-American woman, then 41 years...
Fred and Wilma Flintstone lived in the past, George and Jane Jetson will live in the future and Ralph and Alice Kramden live in the present. Although “The Flintstones” and “The Jetsons” were animated, the three fictional sitcoms, including “The Honeymooners,” follow similar story lines. The husbands work at jobs: Fred on a rock pile, George at Spacely’s Space Rockets and Ralph as a bus driver. Their wives – Wilma, Jane and Alice – stay at home. The comedy occurred in the characters’ home,...
Pedro A. Noguera teaches education and sociology at New York University. The son of Caribbean immigrants, he has a Spanish name, but he is black. In 2008, he published his book, The Trouble with Black Boys, and within its pages, he lists the difficulties that young black males face in America. Noguera writes, “African-American men lead the nation in homicide, as both perpetrators and victims. Their incarceration, conviction, and arrest rates have been at the top of the charts in most states f...
Fifty years ago, on the night of May 7, 1965, in a Florida hotel room, Keith Richards strummed his guitar while a cassette recorder taped a phrase that he had dreamed, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” The next day he asked Mick Jagger to listen, and days later the Rolling Stones recorded the song. Mick and Keith had no idea what they had done. That song catapulted their band into superstar status, laid down one of the greatest pop hooks of all time, and now The Rolling Stone Magazine ranks that...
At a TED conference on March 18, in Vancouver, Bill Gates said, “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next decades, it is most likely to be a highly infectious virus, rather than war; not missiles, but microbes. We are not ready for the next epidemic.” Gates pointed out that the Ebola virus killed 10,194 people in three west African countries this past year, but it could have killed far more. Gates said, “we were lucky that the Ebola virus did not spread through the air, and that...
Abraham Lincoln recited the President’s oath of office on the Capitol’s steps at his second inauguration on Saturday, March 4, 1865. After four years of a ghastly series of bloody battles, the deaths of 620,000 men, and the dismemberment of thousands of others, the Civil War was winding down. Lincoln hoped that the Confederate States would surrender in the coming weeks. By that day, Grant’s army had encircled Lee’s army, the Confederacy’s resources were limited, and its soldiers’ willpower t...
In France, a fight has broken out between university professors and students who wear Muslim headscarves or veils into class. Some professors insist that before they will begin a lecture, students must remove their scarf or veil. French law already bans public school students from wearing headscarves, veils, yarmulkes or crucifixes, but that law does not extend to university students. Isabelle de Mecquenem, a philosophy professor said, “The university invented secularism,” and then during the...
In 1907, the author O. Henry wrote a short story he entitled “The Ransom of Red Chief.” In it, two crooks named Bill and Sam kidnap a red-headed boy in an Alabama town thinking that they will demand a ransom, but unaware that the boy is ornery. He throws rocks at them, claims he is an Indian chief and that they are his horses and forces them to play by his rules. He terrorizes them. Bill and Sam write a ransom note to the boy’s father, Ebenezer Dorset, but he knows his son too well, and so he re...
To learn a second language is difficult, if not impossible. At an early age, a child learns to think in his or her first language, and so his or her brain is set, hardwired for that first language. After that, an adolescent or an adult cannot stop thinking in that first language and begin thinking in a second or third. Thus, most people fail to learn a second language, despite loads of willpower and intense study. One guy said, after years of living in the Orient, “I am just not that good at l...
