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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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...
I recently saw a sign hung on the wall of an area business that stuck out to me. It read, “Anything that makes you smile, giggle or laugh buy it or marry it.” Although I’m sure the sign was meant to be cute and funny and not words of advice to live by, it made me wonder what would happen if we all began basing our life choices on prolific sayings and quotations. Sure these tidbits that we deck our homes and workplaces with can be inspiring and can keep us going on a bad day, but what if we really lived by their advice? If I married every man wh...
They are just words, assembled and stacked with some sort of purpose in mind. Their power when wielded by the right person, however, turns into something forceful. We know what the likes of Shakespeare, Fitzgerald and the great literary artists could make of words—even if the last time we encountered their work was in high school or while watching a Leonardo Di Caprio film. A couple decades ago, while talking with some of the folks responsible for telling future teachers how to conduct themselves in the classroom and—more importantly—how to en...
On January 16, 1919, Nebraska’s legislature voted to ratify the eighteenth amendment that prohibited “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Because Nebraska was the 36th state to ratify the amendment, the temperance movement had the necessary two-thirds of the state legislatures’ approval. A year later, at midnight on January 17, 1920, the amendment, and the Volstead Act to enforce it, turned the United States dry. Temperance officials believed that a Federal...
In the course of the past week, two of my good friends from high school gave birth to baby girls. I couldn’t be more happy for my old friends and their husbands, although it seems weird that I’m finally at the age where peers are getting pregnant intentionally. I’m so pleased that both ladies are doing well and their little ones arrived safely. This recent occurrence caused to realize that I do not wish to become a parent anytime soon, if at all. There are arguments out there both for and against becoming a parent later in life and both seem...
Everybody is talking about Omaha. The reason is a little bizarre. No, Warren Buffett did not waste his entire fortune creating a white sand beach on the Missouri River. There was no announcement on network television that a revival of Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” was in the works. And I’m reasonably certain Omaha Steaks issued no statement promoting vegetarian diets. Did I miss anything related to Nebraska’s largest city? Oh, yeah—the College World Series, otherwise known as the only time 20-somethings excitedly exclaim “We’re goin...
Dating and relationships are hard to master at any age. What works for some people definitely doesn’t work for everyone. While some need to be around a significant other daily, others need time and space to be by themselves. Although I have a feeling that the nuances of dealing with relationships were probably always an elusive beast, I think technology has made them even more complicated. As someone who has a slew of friends, both male and female in many parts of the country I wish to share some advice based on relationship issues I’ve exp...
H1N1 doesn’t do this year’s diabolical flu strain justice—two letters plucked from the alphabet and a single digit to describe a ton of lead slamming your helpless body repeatedly to the couch, nightmarish days without rest, the debilitating nights I probably didn’t take it seriously enough. After all, at least three decades had elapsed since I last engaged in battle with the dreaded flu virus. I was quite a bit younger back then—some 30 years, in fact—therefore presumably more able to fend off its advances. And that instance, if I recall, was...
In a scene from “The Andy Griffith Show,” Deputy Barney Fife showed an inkblot to Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s town drunk, and asked him what he saw. Otis said he saw a bat, but Barney objected and said that the inkblot represented a butterfly. Next, Barney showed Sheriff Andy Taylor the same inkblot, and he too said it was a bat. Barney rolled his eyes and refused to accept that answer. You see a bat, but I see a butterfly. I see a butterfly, but you see a bat. Perspective is everything. Early...
Many of us take the opportunity for a fresh beginning at the start of the new year. Even though we could make changes in our lives at any point we desire, for some reason, when that calendar roles over we’re inclined to make drastic resolutions to which I’m sure most of us know ourselves well enough to realize that we won’t be keeping. Some of us might have even broken them before coming back to work this morning. I’m sure that wishful alcoholics who made resolutions to stop drinking as much and to be more responsible probably failed miserab...
