Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties
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To the editor: The staff, tenants and residents at Community Memorial Health Center would like to share their appreciation to the citizens of Hartley and surrounding areas for their diligence with COVID-19 protocols and vaccinations. Our county’s low positive rate means we can begin to reopen our doors to visitors. I wish you could witness the reunions; they are tearjerkers. I taught psychology at the college level for 25 years. One of my favorite topics was Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist, philosopher and Holocaust survivor. He is c...
The Jim Crow era was a time of bigotry, segregation and terror for Southern blacks who were subjected to all forms of humiliation and ostracized from society. They were disenfranchised by poll taxes, literacy tests and other unobtainable requirements. It was a dark and shameful period in our history. Today, the radical left is raising the specter of Jim Crow to denounce recent voting reforms made by the Georgia Legislature, claiming the new law will disqualify minority voters. This either shows an appalling lack of knowledge about American hist...
It's often said that all politics is local. While true, it could also be argued that our democracy is rooted in the individual. Two recent examples drive home that participation certainly matters. On Monday, the U.S. Census Bureau released state-by-state population counts. Since our decennial tally determines which states get how many seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, new numbers were released for Congress as well. Texas gained two seats while Colorado, Florida, Montana, North...
I wouldn’t say my job offers many opportunities at humor. Save for a few stories each year about dumb criminals – or in 2019, an escaped cow – there aren’t many laughs to find in most things I cover. Council meetings, local elections and everything else on the community news beat don’t really make me chuckle. Last week, however, I did find myself cracking up after receiving a press release from the Iowa DNR. The event didn’t occur in my coverage area or even in northwest Iowa, but I’m sharing it here nonetheless in case some of you could use...
Stop us if you’ve heard this one before. President Joe Biden announced a new plan last week that would completely withdraw American troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 of this year. The move kicks the can on former President Donald Trump’s plan, which called for all troops to be removed by May 1. “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” Biden said during a speech delivered in the Treaty Room of the White House, where former President George W. Bush announced the start of the war in 2001. “It’s time to end...
I’m no good at keeping personal goals and can’t remember when I’ve ever accomplished one. This year I vowed to lose 20 pounds, but my midsection remains pudgy. My never-ending goal to quit biting my nails also remains a work in progress – I’m no saint. Recently, however, I abruptly shifted away from one of my many guilty pleasures. I deleted my Twitter account, and by God, I’ve stuck to it. I had wanted to banish the little blue bird for months, if not years. I don’t care too much about other peoples’ opinions, and Twitter basically exists for...
We hear a lot about people who have bucket lists of the things they want to do or accomplish before they die. Unfortunately, bucket lists are much like New Year's resolutions – dreams without opportunity or motivation that are unlikely to ever happen. I think it is better for us to each have a memory list of all the things we have done in our lives, so that we can always think of that list and be grateful for all we have been able to do and accomplish. No one can ever take that away from us. T...
There's a magic hole in our backyard that's been spewing riches beyond anyone's wildest dreams this spring. That is, if you're a 3-year-old boy obsessed with animals. We've got a magic toad hole. The opening in question is an old tile previously used to funnel basement water away from our 104-year-old Ocheyedan home before we took ownership. We use a different option now, and I forgot about the crevice until recently when it began producing warty amphibians. The opening to the tile now sits in o...
It has been a while since I've written anything. My writers' group, one stimulus for writing, has been on hold due to COVID-19 precautions and the busy holiday season. Fresh ideas for stories to tell seem to be on hold as well. I'm not sure why, but probably because of laziness. Staying home a lot used to stir the creative juices at least a little – out of boredom if nothing else. But my lifestyle has changed dramatically in the few years since I retired from the workforce. I find I just d...
It’s hard for those of us of a certain vintage to realize it has been 39 years since Robert Ray was Iowa’s governor. In spite of the passage of so much time, his name was on the minds of many people last week. What triggered the Bob Ray memories was Gov. Kim Reynolds’ interview with WHO Radio on Thursday. Reynolds was asked about the thousands of children, mostly from Central America, who are showing up this year at our border with Mexico without their parents. They arrive hoping to be allow...
The world is drowning in plastic waste. Millions of animals, birds and sea creatures die every year from ingesting bits of plastic or becoming entangled in plastic litter. Every year, over 8 million tons of plastic waste makes its way into the world's oceans. When plastic has broken down into microplastics, it enters the food chain and becomes a threat to all of us. Nature is being destroyed by plastic waste. Ironically, plastic was invented to protect nature from human destruction. In 1869....
To the editor: Our youngest son is a struggling actor in Los Angeles. One of his lesser-known roles was in a movie entitled, “People Die In This Movie.” Not exactly an A-lister. I’m not a fan of horror films. I think there are enough real life situations to be afraid of without evoking it as entertainment. In David Jeremiah’s article “Huff and Puff,” he explores the comparison between the lessons found in fable “The Three Little Pigs” with modern day fears that comes pounding on our door. Of course, my mind goes directly to the Wolf, a.k.a. CO...
To the editor: The “American Rescue Plan is not a Blue State Bailout” letter published in last week’s newspaper deserves greater scrutiny. Nine percent of the $1.9 trillion so-called Covid Stimulus Bill was dedicated to Covid-related relief projects. Ninety-one percent of the funds went to the following: Migrant and Refugee Assistance, student loan bailout, NASA, USPS, Endowment for the Arts, vets employment training, mental health support, Dept. of Education, Safe Schools Emergency Response to Violence Program, public broadcasting, museums and...
Like every other year, my March Madness bracket was shot to pieces on Day 1 of the tournament. I guessed only seven of the first 16 games correctly on Friday, and 10 of 16 on Saturday. My national champion (Illinois) was knocked out on Sunday and right now there are only six teams in my Sweet 16 still playing. I don’t think I’ll be winning anything in my friends’ pool this year. That doesn’t bother me, though. What did bother me was my Iowa Hawkeyes getting knocked out in the Round of 32 once again. The Black and Gold got absolutely boat ra...
There was a time when Iowa's election laws shone as a bright beacon of democracy to our peers in other states. Thanks to dubious actions by the state Legislature, the Hawkeye State has fallen far from grace. Gov. Kim Reynolds this month signed legislation cutting the state's early voting period and closing the polls an hour earlier on Election Day. This was by no means a bipartisan agreement, as the law was passed on strict party lines in both the House and Senate. Reynolds, a Republican, happil...
To the editor: I found the editorial by Sen. Joni Ernst in the March 11 edition interesting but misleading. The American Rescue Plan supports the following: 1. Extended unemployment payments for those who lost their job because of the pandemic. 2. Increased food aid addressing help for those needing food assistance. 3. School and childcare block grants to be used for improved ventilation, purchase of protective equipment and steps to help schools reopen safely. 4. Speed up distribution and administration of COVID-19 vaccine and testing across t...
It’s no secret that the worst global pandemic in a generation has brought unforeseen challenges and hardships. But it’s often during these challenging times when the American people band together, and we’ve seen it: folks across Iowa have risen to the occasion to help out their friends, family members, neighbors, and communities. We’ve also seen it in our government. Even in increasingly partisan times, state legislatures – and even Congress – have worked across party lines to provide rel...
attended a Parochial school located about a mile away from our farm. I graduated from eighth grade in 1963, and had not yet adjusted to high school when President John F. Kennedy was shot. The world was turned upside down, and I didn’t know what to do about it. High school was a struggle for me. I had to work hard to get good grades, especially in math and science classes. Sports were just as difficult for me, partly because we didn’t have organized sports in Parochial school, and partly bec...
The front page of the March 12, 2020 edition of the Sentinel-News carried four stories most readers would consider “positive.” The main article provided an update on construction progress at H-M-S’s new elementary school, while two side stories highlighted the Hartley Community Center’s upcoming fundraiser and Royal organizing plans for a July visit from Iowa’s Ride. The fourth story told the tale of H-M-S’s quiz bowl team, which had just won the KCAU-TV tournament for the first time in school history. The script had completely flipped the...
Hartley taxpayers can give themselves a big, hard pat on the back. Voters on Tuesday approved the $1.7 pool bond measure with 84 percent of the vote. That's huge, and it proved city residents are more than willing to invest in the community's future. This multi-million dollar project has been years in the making and it will benefit generations of Hartley residents in the years to come. Hartley's current pool has had a good run. It was built in 1958 and received its last major upgrades in 1996,...
Capitalism has been the engine driving our economy since the earliest settlers arrived to colonize the New World under charters from the Virginia Company of London and the Massachusetts Bay Company. The colonists set about farming, trading and engaging in commerce to create a modest economy that was the beginning of American capitalism. With America’s abundant supply of natural resources, labor, capital and entrepreneurial spirit, the free-market economy has been wildly successful. Modern c...
Half a million and counting More Americans have now died of COVID-19 than those who perished in both World Wars and the Vietnam War combined. As of Tuesday morning, the tally sat at 500,104. Half a million dead Americans is hard to grasp. That’s a lot of empty of chairs at the dinner table and so many gaping holes in the hearts of loved ones they left behind. We must never forget, and as President Joe Biden noted Monday during a vigil for coronavirus victims, “we have to resist becoming numb to the sorrow.” COVID-19 has dominated our way of li...
Though they share their main sentiments, it is my hope that this column will be better received than Jeep’s Bruce Springsteen Super Bowl commercial. Alice Schertle’s Little Blue Truck is a book that is on constant rotation in my kid’s library. In essence, the story follows an old, single cab, blue (please don’t read into the color) pickup truck as it goes about its morning, beeping hello to each animal it passes on the way. After greeting a handful of barnyard animals in the country, Blue is...
Many Americans remember President George W. Bush's 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech not for its words, but for its imagery. The address came following decisive success by U.S. troops during the second war with Iraq. Perched atop the deck of an aircraft carrier, Bush announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq with a banner that read "Mission Accomplished" prominently displayed in the background. He never actually uttered those words during his speech, but photos of the president...
I bid adieu to a lifelong friend last month. It wasn't of the human variety or even living – it was my 1988 Ford Festiva. I've written about her in this space once before. The Festiva is a four-speed compact that more closely resembles a pregnant roller skate than a vehicle. I inherited her from my grandfather, who drove the go-kart since I was a wee tyke. I kept the "little white car" humming from my freshman year of high school until her departure from my back yard last month – a proud fea...
