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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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...
Now, we’re right in the midst of the most festive part of the holiday season. Although Christmas is behind us and New Year’s Eve is ahead I’m sure most of our celebrations don’t take place exclusively on those two days. I enjoy spending time with family during this season as much as anyone, though I don’t think I’ll ever understand sitting one’s small child on a bearded stranger’s lap for a photo op. Even though none of my kin are particularly religious, Christmas is a big deal for my mother’s family. My grandma owns an army of festive holida...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ready to ring in the new year, Americans look ahead with optimism, according to a new AP-Times Square New Year's Eve poll. Their ratings of the year gone by? Less than glowing. What the public thought of 2013: GOOD YEAR OR GOOD RIDDANCE? On the whole, Americans rate their own experience in 2013 more positively than negatively, but when asked to assess the year for the United States or the world at large, things turn sour. —All told, 32 percent say 2013 was a better year for them than 2012, while 20 percent say it was wor...
The lopsided national agony over “Duck Dynasty” patriarch Phil Robertson’s plight has entertained me to no end. The controversy—as it were—says far more than the reality star’s commentary touching on civil rights, sin, world history and homosexuality. Now, I subscribe to GQ, the magazine in which Robertson’s remarks appeared, so I have actually read the piece in its entirety. Many news outlets (and most politically charged talking heads) have concentrated on the lines that can be construed as homophobic. Let’s face it, the man hardly comes acro...
Not all young people are awful. That being said, some of them are pretty terrible. Who hasn’t read an article about how millennials are despicable people? (Millennials are in the generation of people born in 1980 or after, which includes myself.) According to many, they’re selfish, they’re lazy, they’re entitled little brats who will never be able to care for themselves and will depend on their parents until the day they die. In some cases this is true. Our desire as a society to ensure that our children have it better than we ever did may hav...
On Friday the thirteenth Prince Harry arrived at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. The twenty-nine-year old British army helicopter pilot joined his six UK teammates as they gathered around the mirror-like chrome sphere set atop the red and white striped pole. “It will just prove to everybody,” Harry said, “that there’s so much that can be made possible when you think that nothing else is left.” His team wore red parkas and was one of three teams that raised funds for Walking with the Wound...
The end of the year is when some of the greatest movies come to theaters. Personally, I’m really looking forward seeing “American Hustle” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” I’m trying to finish the book of the latter before it comes out first, though, because the book is always better. I saw “The Hunger Games” in theaters twice because I loved the books. I went to see the movie by myself, both times—which might sound lonely to some, but I actually kind of enjoyed it. It was my first time going to a theater by myself, and I noticed that when...
I don’t know if there’s a scholar out there willing to risk an otherwise stellar academic career by devoting a few months to answer what I consider an important question or not, but I would love to find out (without conducting the research myself) just when lists became an American obsession. Certainly the phenomenon predated the 1977 publication of “The Book of Lists” and David Letterman’s nightly top ten lists that followed. Perhaps it could be traced to the “Hit Parade” and other accounts of the week’s top songs, reaching back to the 194...
I can find virtually any information with the touch of a button on my smart phone. I can learn about legal lingo, get weather updates and discover mundane facts about all my high school friends on Facebook in seconds. Technology has made it a breeze to research any topic and to stay informed about current events. In theory, these advances should contribute to our overall knowledge as people, but in many cases, they do not. Do most of us spend our time online in productive pursuits of knowledge about current events, politics or world news or do...
I cannot begin to express how glad I am that I don’t have to take finals anymore. Many of my friends continued on to graduate school, law school, nursing school, medical school, etc., so they’re currently driving themselves insane with their first rounds of even more difficult finals. Talking to them right now is a little like talking to a toddler, and I mean that in the most loving way possible. They’re jittery and unable to sit still because of the ridiculous amounts of caffeine they’re consuming on a daily basis, sensitive and on the ver...
Sixty thousand years ago perhaps as few as “a couple of hundred people,” members of the species Homo Sapiens, departed “humanity’s birthplace in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa,” and ventured out of Africa and crossed into Arabia. Some of their progeny walked north into Europe, but others headed east into Asia and down to Australia, or crossed the Bering Sea and walked south into North and South America. Now, after 2,500 generations, human beings claim the Earth. The National Geographi...
Two times in my life I’ve picked up and moved to a seemingly random place where I knew no one, or almost no one. When I moved to Denver, I knew only the person I moved there with. I left an extensive network of friends in Indiana that I’d been making basically since birth and a gigantic extended family. Many of my relatives still live on Sievers Road in Vincennes, Ind. When I moved to Denver I faced anonymity for the first time in my life. When I lived in Vincennes, everyone knew my dad. In Denver I knew one person. I found making friends fro...
Watching football with my family on Thanksgiving, I noticed that a large portion of black Friday commercials indicated that they were to start Thursday night. The holiday already gets the short end of the stick with Christmas decorations and music starting on the first of November, now we can’t even have a full day dedicated to being thankful for the things we have in life. When did saving a few extra dollars start to take precedence over spending time with family? People always complain that time is going too fast, and this is probably one o...
Over the weekend Babe Heffron died. No big deal, really. Heffron was 90 years old—the range in which time claims so many people. The shadow moves, as poet Rolf Humphries wrote. Of course, late in life Heffron had advanced from the position of regular old World War Two veteran to something special. He served in the company featured in the HBO mini-series “Band of Brothers.” Following on the heels of “When Trumpets Fade” and “Saving Private Ryan,” it was one of the productions responsible for imposing realism on our normally whitewashed i...
Obviously this is Thanksgiving week. You know and fear the stories: six lane highways running bumper to bumper, even past the mall exits; airport security lines clogged by once-a-year novices clumsily untying shoes or elbowing their way back through the masses to toss a jacket on the conveyor belt; hour long waits to pay for a tin of cranberry sauce as someone up ahead grills the cashier about turkey recipes. AAA Travel Services anticipates that more than 43 million Americans will venture 50 miles or more to gather with family, watch a little...
Rex Walls was a character. Brash, loud, full of opinions, and convinced that he knew all that needed knowing, he stormed his way through life. When his daughter, Jeannette, then only four, burned her stomach when cooking some hotdogs, Rex got into a shouting match with the doctor, and then took her home. When attending mass, Rex would shout blasphemous words at the priest, embarrassing his wife and four kids. He was able to talk himself into a job as an electrician anytime and anywhere, but he could never keep the job once the supervisor gave h...
Real criminal court cases are not that much like Law and Order. Anyone who’s ever watched the show and then actually attended a criminal trial knows exactly what I’m talking about. Right now I’m in the midst of covering my second criminal trial, so by no means am I an expert. I have learned that real trials have some similarities to the show, but for the most part they are much different. In many episodes of Law and Order it seems that a criminal trial takes place very soon after the police investigation. In some episodes, the inves...
It’s a funny feeling when your perspective on something changes. In this instance, my opinion of my hometown changed dramatically between ages 18 and 22. As a senior in high school, I couldn’t wait to get out of Terre Haute. I was a few months from going “away” to college—Indiana University was only about an hour from home, but the majority of my schoolmates stayed in town to go to Indiana State, so it still counts. I absolutely could not wait to get away. I had been around the same people for so long and I was just over the drama of high schoo...
