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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Work isn’t everything. As someone who’s worked closely with the elderly, I can tell you that in one’s golden years, the fondest recollections of a life of events never involve how well you crafted expense reports or how many hours you spent laboring over spreadsheets at your desk. Although one’s occupation might be an integral part of one’s identity, it doesn’t make up all of who and what a person is. Being a reporter is a big part of who I am, I work a lot and I think about work quite a bit when I’m not working. I probably read an unhealthy...
I am not a Luddite—not really. You remember the Luddites, right? In the early years of the Industrial Revolution, groups of frustrated British textile workers began smashing machines meant to improve productivity. They had cause, mind you—at least in their minds. In the 1800s, waves of new technology send more and more laborers to the streets, where they were consigned to lives of crime, rum or other things fodder for the likes of Hogarth and Dickens. Men were losing lifelong jobs and they perhaps rightly blamed labor saving devices. Even the...
Three weeks ago, Hillary Clinton spoke at a fundraiser at Long Beach, California and suggested that Vladimir Putin’s actions in Crimea equaled those of Adolf Hitler eight decades ago. She said, “Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30’s. All the Germans that were the ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s wh...
We could all use a good dose of self doubt from time to time. Of course it’s great to be confidant, aware of your own strengths and to have faith in your abilities to accomplish difficult tasks and to do well or even excel at your job. But overconfidence can not only put off those around you, but can make you careless in your work. A healthy amount of self doubt make us double check what we’ve done, spend a little more time on tasks and to worry a bit if we’ve done as well as we could have. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Ove...
A line from “The Great Gatsby” came to mind over the weekend. It was something about the human capacity for hope or wonder—reaching over to the bookcase to double check seemed a bit too strenuous for a Saturday afternoon. Fitzgerald was, of course, referring to our innate ability to see potential. But what about the human capacity for foolish trust? Some firmly believe, despite a swell of evidence against their supposition, that the president is either a tyrant or a Muslim. Others look back on the previous administration and pronounce the f...
I have no patience for people who attempt to completely ignore the unpleasant things that happen in life. I totally believe that sensationalism in the news is wrong and that constant streams of stories about murders and explosions is not a fair representation of what’s happening in the world. But bad things do happen often and people need to know about it. I recently reconnected with a very close friend from high school on Facebook. We exchanged quite a few lengthy messages talking about what was new in our lives before I told her about some n...
What to make of Malaysia Airlines flight 370, missing for more than a week? Theories take hold for a few days—the flight crew landed it on some uncharted island for no known reason, it scorched Kazakhstani earth with blazing exhaust from just 5,000 feet, it plunged into the Indian Ocean—before being contradicted by the very Malaysian officials who offered up the hypotheses in the first place. It’s difficult to gauge their competence. With nothing to go on, they turn to such reliable regional governments as China, Pakistan and Myanmar for assis...
On Monday the U.S. Senate passed the Victims Protection Act, unanimously. This bill, which was introduced by Sen. Claire McCaskill and sponsored by Nebraskan Sen. Deb Fischer, as well as Sen. Kelly Ayotte, strives to put an end to sexual assault in the military, bolster victims’ rights and make offenders more accountable for their actions. This legislation allows the victims of sexual assault to decide whether they’d rather have their cases tried in military or civilian courts. A bill which would have made more drastic changes to the way tha...
Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan is a very Irish name, and she had the red-hair to go with it. Born March 16, 1912, the day before St. Patrick’s Day, in Ely, Nevada, her parents moved to Cerritos, California, when she was a child. After high school, she worked her way through the University of Southern California, taught at Whittier High School, and then married the lawyer Richard M. Nixon. Patricia is the feminine form of Patrick, the name of the English missionary who introduced Christianity a...
Ah, another ignoble spectacle. On one end, President Barack Obama appears helpless as Russia envelopes the Crimean section of Ukraine, at least to impatient eyes. The volley of words from the White House is reminiscent of Obama’s response to the crisis in Syria, now in its fourth year. On the other a predictable assortment embraces the leadership style of Vladimir Putin, despite its blatant anti-humanitarian, anti-democratic stance. This group consists mostly of knee-jerk opponents of anything Obama. Not that the president’s stern verbal war...
I’m sure we’ve all seen a news clip in which a neighbor or casual acquaintance of a rapist or murderer spoke about how nice and normal the person seemed to be. It happens all the time. Of course, a person can’t really tell much about neighbors by pleasantries exchanged while getting the newspaper or taking out the garbage. If you think you can, you’re sorely mistaken. Most anyone who says they act the same way in public as they do in private is lying. But I often wonder how many people are out there who keep their true feelings, impulse...
Why would anyone wish to bury themselves—figuratively—in the wilds of western Nebraska? People residing in more sophisticated climes toss around names like Canali, Rocky Patel and Astin Martin. They speak of commuting times and cocktails at happy hour. They attach the same importance to area codes we do to the coveted 39 or 21 license plates. In urban areas they debate such options as Punjabi, Neapolitan or New American for dinner. We savor Bud Light and toss verbal accusations over the choice of Ford over Chevy to haul us there. So why rel...
The New York Times reported last Sunday that Queen Elizabeth II is strapped for cash. This is a surprising development for an English monarch who owns Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands, acres of farmland, horses, art, and jewelry, and has a net worth that Forbes magazine estimates at $500 million. In addition, she collects 15% of the income derived each year from the Crown Estate, assets that the nation owns but the queen uses, such as Buckingham Palace and the Crown Jewels. “The B...
I guess it’s a cliché to say that if we’re not doing anything that scares us, we’re not really living life. Even if it is, I think its a concept most of us don’t normally ponder. We go about our lives, usually following a familiar route even on walks and when driving. We might forgo an exciting job opportunity because we’re under qualified for it when it could be a chance to expand our horizons and learn new things. We might stay in an unhappy relationship out of fear of being alone. I’ve often heard many friends from back home in Indiana talk...
So Victor Yanukovych apparently fled into parts unknown, trailed by charges of murder after months of political unrest and popular protest against his regime. In shorthand, the revolt against the Ukrainian president began when his government rejected a potential agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia—notwithstanding Ukraine’s historic distrust of their neighbors, which runs so deep the people welcomed Hitler’s troops as liberators from their envelopment by the old Soviet Union. As a result,...
Many of those who made statements about the death of co-founder of Cabela’s, Dick Cabela described his life as the American dream. As someone who started a business on a $45 investment at a kitchen table that grew to a $3.6 billion world wide corporation, he surely did create a dream life for he and his family. Cabela saw wild success in his business, lived in small town American with his family and was a regular church-goer. His life was surely the envy of many of his peers. Although most people will never see success comparable to that of t...
You know, I’m not even sure if President’s Day comes with a possessive apostrophe. The holiday consolidating the celebration of two American icons born inconveniently in the same month is just that kind of afterthought. Yeah, government employees and school children enjoyed a day off. To the rest of us it was just more of the same. But George Washington and Abraham Lincoln deserve a little more. To be fair, however, we’ve come to treat Washington as a marble man, a founder carved in stone and emblazoned on street signs across the country, devoi...
Theodore Roosevelt’s first wife, Alice Lee, died of a kidney infection on Valentine’s Day 1884, just two days after she delivered her first child, a daughter, also named Alice. The tragedy was compounded when Theodore’s mother died of typhoid fever that same day. So grief-stricken was Theodore by the double loss that he packed up and headed for a ranch in southwest North Dakota where he tended cattle for two years, expecting his sister in New York to care for his infant daughter. Upon his retur...
Diamonds do not mean love and they certainly don’t mean forever. I will never understand why a woman would be excited by receiving an expensive, generic piece of jewelry. I know that I’m quite different from many women and I don’t blame any lady for her affinity for nice jewelry. This doesn’t change the fact that if I ever received any item covered in diamonds, I would immediately think, “Someone’s gonna rob me for this.” Although, again, I have no problems with ladies who’d love some flowers and chocolates for Valentine’s Day (to each her...
I can’t stand the Olympics. Or, to be more precise, I can’t stand Olympic television coverage. The competition can be thrilling. Even the biathalon—that bizarre combination of cross country skiing and target shooting—challenges the fitness, mental focus and skill of athletes involved. But for every minute skis skid through man-made white powder snow, for every gentle shove propelling a curling stone down the ice, viewers must endure long stretches of blather. A study conducted by the Philadelphia Inquirer during the 1992 winter games found t...
It’s human nature to feel more sympathy when unpleasant things happen to those we know as opposed to when something bad happens to a stranger. There was an outpouring of sympathy and support on Facebook for the accused perpetrator of a recent back robbery in Sidney. The woman who allegedly committed the crime reportedly had mental health issues, and many of those in the community felt sorry for her. There’s nothing wrong with hoping that someone you know and like who’s battling mental illness seeks treatment and feels better. Those with mental...
I love a good television commercial. At their worse, they are filled with braying injury lawyers, used cars and salad spinners. In the hands of a marketing genius, however, these brief video segments tell entire stories in a matter of seconds—a task that would have eluded the great writers of any age. Imagine Shakespeare’s agent insisting he cram Claymation raisins and 60s Motown into a half minute meant to entice average Americans to purchase tiny boxes from Sun-Maid—or whichever brands were based in California. In my memory I hold onto such...
Obviously, most of us are pretty reliant on our memories for daily function. Memory guides us to work, helps us complete tasks and look back on our lives. Many of us would probably be surprised to find that the ways in which we remember a special or even a traumatic event in our lives was not how it actually happened at all. While covering this week’s trial and listening to evidence and witness testimony, it’s clear that everyone remembers events differently. Of course, some of the people testifying in the trial could very well be lying. Set...
Edgar Allan Poe first saw in print his poem “The Raven” on January 29, 1845. You might recall from high school literature, that the raven visited the poet on a cold December night and would say only one word, “Nevermore,” a word that rhymed with the poet’s deceased lover, the lost Lenore. The poet shouted at the raven, wanted to know why the bird tormented him, and called it a “Prophet, a thing of evil!” The raven replied, “Nevermore.” On January 3 this year, Heather MacDonald, a writ...
This week the National Institutes of Health began infecting volunteers with a mild form of the current flu bug, hoping to discover a more reliable vaccine. Now, most sentient types avoid the potentially deadly virus. They know that even if the microscopic beast doesn’t flatten you for good, it can easily knock you around for a week or so. But these foolhardy volunteers know that at the end of a three week quarantine period, some government clerk will be handing them a check amounting to $3,000. Besides, it’s just a mild form. I’ve survi...
