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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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...
Today, we honor Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. In the summer of 1855, George Harding hired Lincoln to assist him in a patent infringement case because Harding needed an attorney knowledgeable of Illinois law. At the last moment, the trial was moved from Chicago to Cincinnati, and so Lincoln’s services weren’t needed. Instead of withdrawing from the case though, Lincoln headed to Cincinnati to offer his help. In the meantime, Harding hired Edwin Stanton, a polished lawyer from Ohio. In Cincinnati, H...
Voters will head to the polls on Tuesday to cast their ballots on just one question. But it’s a big decision that’ll impact the Sidney community for decades to come. The time is now to vote “yes” for the bond that’ll create the funds for a new elementary school to house students in kindergarten through 4th grade. The need to provide a school with the space, technology and amenities for our youngsters to receive a 21st Century education is too overwhelming to ignore. The new school – to be situated on donated land on the east side of town – w... Full story
Historians rank Frederick Jackson Turner as one of the most noted of all American historians. In 1893, in Chicago at the American Historical Association, he delivered a paper he entitled The Significance of the Frontier in American History, and in it, he argued that the frontier shaped the American character. Turner insisted that on the frontier pioneers dropped their European characteristics and values, and picked up a respect for democracy, an intolerance of social hierarchy, a distrust of...
Vivek Ranadivé coached his daughter’s National Junior Basketball team at Redwood City, south of San Francisco, in Silicon Valley. Because Vivek had grown up in Mumbai, where he had played cricket and soccer, Vivek knew very little about basketball. His daughter’s team was composed of twelve-year-old girls, who were short, white, and displayed no talent. They could barely shoot, dribble, or jump, and yet they won most of their games, losing only in the championship game. How? Malcolm Glad...
The time has come for me to bid you all adieu. I'm leaving Sidney to take a job in Bristol, Conn., with ESPN as a program assistant with the radio department. Before a couple of weeks ago, I had full intentions on staying in Sidney for a year or two. But then I received a call from an 860 area code. For as long as I can remember, I've loved sports and loved watching ESPN. My mom was very protective of her son. The scope of mediated text I could consume was very very narrow. I couldn't listen to...
The two Communist holdouts from the Cold War dominate the news again: Cuba on one page, and North Korea on the other. First, President Barak Obama wants to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba after five and a half decades of Communist rule. Then, the FBI has traced “one of the most punishing cyber-attacks on a major American corporation in recent memory” back to the Guardians of Peace, all because of a new movie that mocks Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s dictator. Both Cuba and North Korea...
Della sold her hair to buy “a platinum watch fob” for Jim, her husband, and he sold his watch to buy “tortoise shell combs” for Della’s hair. On Christmas Day they opened their presents, and neither he nor she could enjoy his or her gift. Without her long hair, she no longer needed the combs, and without his watch, he no longer needed a watch fob. That is the plot that the American author O. Henry reveals in his splendid short story, The Gift of the Magi. “The Grinch hated Christmas....
On Nov. 23, a week ago last Sunday, another Soyuz rocket launched three astronauts into outer space from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and after a six-hour flight they docked at the International Space Station 268 miles above the Pacific Ocean. The three included the Russian cosmonaut Anton Schkaplerov, the European Space Agency astronaut from Italy Samantha Cristoforetti, and NASA’s Terry Virts. They joined the three others already there: NASA’s Barry Wilmore and two Russian cos...
Billy Graham will celebrate another birthday this week, his ninety-sixth. As far as I know, he still lives, despite a lifetime of poor health: “hernias, retina clots, pleurisies, headaches, nauseas, removal of a salivary gland, urinary infections, ulcerative colitis, jaw abscesses, tumors on the forehead,” plus “cysts, polyps, infections, pneumonia, chronic high blood pressure, spider bites, and a series of falls that have broken eighteen of his ribs.” When he was twenty-six, he came down wi...
