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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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....
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...
I complain too much. I have a (hopefully) stable job that I actually enjoy, I have a roof over my head, albeit a very tiny section of roof and I have many people in my life that care about me. But I still feel the need to constantly complain about things that really aren’t that important. I think complaining makes us all feel a little bit better about our own personal plight and helps us to vent frustrations about whatever is going wrong in our lives. Complaints can be a good thing or a bad thing. I find legitimate complaints about a wrong d...
In March of 1992, three astronomers, Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy discovered their ninth comet, hence its name, “Shoemaker-Levy 9.” The team determined that S-L9 was orbiting Jupiter now rather than the sun. Because Jupiter is a heavy-weight planet, exerting an enormous gravitational pull, astronomers call it the solar system’s vacuum sweeper. In July of 1992, astronomers noticed that Jupiter’s force had broken S-L9 into 23 fragments that they labelled A through W and that ea...
All of you out there with children are braver folks than I. It’s not the financial responsibility that scares me. It’s not losing all my free time or devoting a large chunk of my life to other people that makes me hesitant to start a family. The thing that really makes me nervous to create my own little human being is the prospect that I might mess up. That would be a little different than misspelling a name in a story or forgetting to ask an important question in an interview, both things which make me cringe. It would mean that I’ve raised or...
We’re all fans of rules, regulations and principals, until those frameworks for living our lives apply to us personally in ways that we don’t like. Although we live in a very conservative area, I’ve met many people who are fiscally conservative until it comes to using government money to build something that they want, personally. It’s hard not to be that way. Of course you understand the merits of a program that benefits you or your business better than one that would help out someone else. Obviously you get why a feature in the communi...
Moments after the Supreme Court published its Hobby Lobby decision, a friend of mine posted a telling criticism on Facebook. “Thank you SCOTUS,” he wrote. “As a Hindu, I will now opt out of any Health Department requirement to exterminate.” My friend is not, so far as I know, a religious person. He does, however, own a couple of restaurants in Dallas. Across town, there is—or at least was, it’s been awhile since I’ve paid any notice to that city’s dining trends—a popular venue run out of a Hare Krishna temple. OK, it may have been a Buddhist t...
Joseph J. Ellis says in his book, Founding Brothers, “No event in American history, which was so improbable at the time, has seemed so inevitable in retrospect as the American Revolution.” In other words, Ellis contends that the revolution was not foreordained to happen. In 1760, few English-speaking people, either in England or in its thirteen colonies, believed in the likelihood of an American rebellion against King George III and Parliament. Few, if any, foresaw its approach. According to...
Stop telling small children that you know or you meet how cute they are. We have a habit of fawning over children and praising their parents for creating such cute kids. Most kids are adorable and parents like to hear it, however when you see a friend or acquaintance’s child and you always praise them for their looks, what are you really telling them? You are telling that child that one of the most important things about them—maybe the most important thing—is how they look. This is true for all children, but especially for girls. We have this...
Universal truths are hard to come by, when you think about it. We can all agree on “thou shalt not kill,” for example—until war, hoodies, bad guys with guns or the right to choose muddy the issue. Same with that “give unto Caesar” bit, which we pummel every year with jabs about just how much really belongs to government. Even more modern bits of advice, such as “don’t do drugs,” fail scrutiny when you consider the handfuls of behavioral modification pills we pump down teenage throats every month. But I would argue the case for one sage univer...
Next week some five hundred visitors will convene at the Real Bird Ranch, adjacent to the Little Bighorn Battle site, near Hardin, Montana, to watch the 21st Annual Battle of the Little Bighorn Re-enactment. For four days men will dress in cavalry soldier uniforms and ride their horses in the 7th U.S. Cavalry, under the command of Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, played by Steve Alexander of Monroe, Michigan. Also, young Indians from the Crow, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe tribes...
Many of the Americans I encounter seem to think they know a lot about geography. Most of them are wrong. When I lived in Denver and told anyone there that I was from Indiana, they would ask if I grew up in South Bend or Indianapolis. I had to reply, no, that I grew up about two hours from Indianapolis and five from South Bend. These people would often regale me of stories about relatives that lived in Indianapolis, like I somehow knew them or of the trip they took to South Bend. I really don’t understand this practice. I have never even been t...
I first heard of O.J. Simpson on television—black and white television, to be precise. During some long ago bowl game, the announcers kept referring to “Old Jay” Simpson, or at least that’s what I heard. I imagined a grizzled veteran named Jay, his hair dusted by age, slipping through the line of scrimmage. College kids looked old to a tyke like me, anyway. His college career was legendary, as was his time in the NFL. But those of us once forced to dial up friends from fixed positions or stop them on street corners to pass along the most re...
Big flags are symbolic of one thing, for the most part—used car sales. Just about every large auto dealership across the country unfurls one of those eye catching linens, measuring half a football field or thereabout, waving over a shining sea of polished metal and plastic. Perhaps some of these vehicles are liveried in amber or majestic purple, who knows. Of course, there were large flags of greater consequence. I have no idea exactly when Baltimore seamstress Mary Pickersgill finished the most famous of these. It was 200 years ago and it w...
Floyd Landis rode his bicycle for the United States Postal Team for three years, from 2002-2004, alongside his teammate, Lance Armstrong, who won the Tour de France each of those years. Floyd admits now that during those three years, he cowered to Lance. It was known that “Lance called the shots on the team,” and “what Lance said went.” “He ran his team like a high-powered corporation.” Lance wanted to win big, and he did so by doping himself and his teammates. In 1995, Lance had lost a race...
When I went the Cabela’s shareholder meeting last year, a few days after I moved to Sidney, I can’t tell you how surprised I was at how devoted Cabela’s employees were to their company. Some of the workers’ emotional attachment to Cabela’s and its founders astonished me. This observation of Cabela’s employees’ dedication to their employer continued through my time here. At the shareholder meeting yesterday, as I milled through the crowd and spoke to a few people I heard nothing but positive comments. I’m sure everyone who works there isn’t hap...
Does a bucket list consist of dreams or goals? I suppose it depends upon the person creating said list. I might reasonably say that one day I hope to see another 1970 Plymouth Roadrunner Superbird in passing on some rural highway. The last time it happened was a surprise—a big shark-nosed, big winged hemi-powered beast parked at a gas station in the wilds of a Chesapeake Bay peninsula. On the other hand, for me to jot “own a Superbird” on my bucket list … well, that defies reality. First I would have to claim several million in lottery winning...
During the past week, the internet blew up with posts followed by #notallmen and #yesallwomen. These were both inspired by the shooting that took place at the University of California at Santa Barbara ended in the death of six students as well as the shooter. The shooter was reportedly angry enough that women weren’t attracted to him and rejected him that he went on a shooting rampage. In an answer to the shooter’s misogynistic views of women, the #notallmen campaign began arguing that not all men see women as objects and not all men exp...
Most of us understand, deep down, that the presidency could hardly be called a cushy job. Most also know that national problems are never as easy to solve as television noisemakers would have us believe. Consider the intricacies of foreign policy, the personalities one must deal with across the globe, the various flash points, the unforeseen threats, the many worries on the domestic front, all that blather coming from Congress, the endless accusations from partisans ... To wrest command over all of this requires a rare combination of inner...
A caveman lives in a cave, carries a wooden club with a stone head, dresses in animal skins, pats his pet dinosaur, and then drags women around by their hair. This stereotype originated in the comics. There is Alley Oop, who carried a mean-looking war club, lived in the kingdom of Moo, had a pretty girlfriend named Oola and a pet dinosaur named Dinny. Then, there is Fred and Wilma Flintstone, Barney and Betty Rubble, Pebbles, Bam-Bam, and Dino, Fred and Wilma’s dinosaur. Comics devoted to p...
Earlier this week I heard news of the jerky gun that Cabela’s recalled due to overheating issues that could cause a fire hazard. As of last week there was only one report of a jerky gun battery pack overheating, with no injuries, according to the Associated Press. This news made me think about all the inventions out there that no one really needs. Of course Cabela’s sells a plethora of equipment that is useful, practical and even necessary for many outdoor adventures. I do not think that the jerky gun is one of them. The gun, which rep...
I knew one of the two men. There was no way for me to have met the other. They were friends from grade school. They played together on the Esther, Missouri, high school basketball team—although, technically, both lived in a town then known as Flat River, a rough lead mining community, where Norman Rockwell images butted up against the reality of fistfights between teens from rival cities. They graduated into a world emerging from the Great Depression. Both men joined the Marines. One was my uncle, Harold Thomas. Unable to find steady work, h...
Nothing bothers me more than uninformed people angrily spouting political beliefs. Don’t get me wrong, if you’re knowledgeable about the issues and you have different opinions that I do, I could listen to you talk all day. I enjoy a good debate as long as both sides can keep cool and remain respectful. One of the things that bothers me most is when someone says that legislation is being crammed down peoples’ throats. First of all, if you’re one of the people saying this, you’re being dramatic. Calm down. Whenever legislation is passed wi...
During the primary campaign a steady stream of Republican candidates turned our front door into something like a turnstile. We lost track of the number as visits increased toward the end. It was just a blur of future governors, Senators and attorney generals. To be honest, we were quite happy to meet with them and share their message with readers. A newspaper is, after all, a way for the people to learn of candidates and their ideas from snippets notably longer than the modern day television sound bite. Yet it is difficult for politicians to...
On Tuesday, April Fools’ Day, several dozen Dartmouth students gathered in the office belonging to the university’s president, Philip J. Hanlon, and insisted that he respond to each of the items listed on their Freedom Budget. The students demanded a faculty that included more women and minorities, gender-neutral housing and restrooms, and harsher penalties for sexual assaults. In their Freedom Budget, they wrote, “We seek to eradicate the systems of oppression” that exist on the Dartmou...
