One Nation, Under God
One Nation, Under God
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On Tuesday night, I attended the Malta City Council meeting at City Hall in hopes of bringing you, ladies and gentlemen – and David Rummell – the most up-to-date news about this city as I possibly can. Some might think attending these meeting once a month would be a boring, bothersome, pain in the neck. Not so! The dedication of our four City Council Folk, as well as Mayor Shyla Jones and Clerk/Treasurer Carolyn Schmoeckel, inspire me to come to these monthly meetings on Tuesday night’s after a 10-to-12 hour work day is spent filling these...
Alright. I know. Complaining about the mosquitoes in the column is getting redundant. Nobody likes them, why would they? So instead of complaining about these little buggers, I’m going to turn the tables and tell you why I like these rascally bloodsuckers. Having them around is better than at least one alternative. Last night my wife was flipping through her Facebook feed and came to a post about a critter I had never seen or heard of. Ladies and gentleman – and David Rummell – I present the flying fox. Charity showed me a picture of this...
I timed myself this past Friday. It takes me exactly four minutes to get from my back porch to the 50-yard line of the Mustangs football field. The only reason I timed myself on Friday is because for the second consecutive week, I made the walk back and forth, prior to kickoff, because I had left something vital to any reporter at home before the kickoff of each game. Two Fridays ago, said vital important was a pen. A reporter at an event without a pen is about a useful as a fork in a sugar bowl. The item I forgot this past Friday prior to the...
You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can’t predict the weather Growing up as a Navy Brat – i.e. Papa was a sailor – I had the pleasure of living in locals with varying types of weather. San Diego, California and Honolulu, Hawaii, quickly pop to the top of my list when the weather where I am living turns against me. San Diego is an average temperature of 70 degrees, 365 days of the year and if you live on the coast, the mercury in the thermometer never goes much higher than 88 and never dips much lower than 50. It’s pretty nice there. Honolul...
One of the first things I learned in sports reporting 101 was not to be a homer. The professor who taught me this – one Michael Downs – took this so seriously that even when he would attend a game with his wife, on his own time and not as a reporter, he would sit there quietly and not cheer or clap, just observe. This man taught me more about journalism than any one person. I’d say 99 percent of what he taught me I try to apply to my reporting today. Not being a homer...eh, not so much. The idea behind not being a fan of any one team while...
As the calendar flips to a new month I get to do one of my favorite things as the editor of the Phillips County News, i.e. looking through past volumes of this newspaper, one I was fortunate enough to inherent searching for old stories which peak my interest. I spend a solid eight hours scanning the pages of old newspapers for tidbits from the past that I find interesting …tidbits I hope you find interesting as well. Early on I found out the folks at Hi-line Retirement devote a time, once a week, to gathering to hear the Yesterday’s Phi...
My Grandpa Bud used to tell me that when someone is being rude, obnoxious, annoying etc...that I should simply “kill ‘em with kindness.” Grandpa Bud also used to tell me, when I was much younger, that I got the freckles on my face from chasing a loose cow with a stick I was flipping back and forth, but that is a whole other story for a different column. The reason I bring up the “kill ‘em with kindness” credo is that of as of late, I’ve been going to that mantra a lot. Back in the good old days of college, when I was acquiring a degree I’ll pro...
For most people, the term Reality TV conjures images of the Kardashians being annoying, Paris Hilton mindlessly flaunting her wealth or the boys of Duck Dynasty doing any and everything in 22-minutes besides building bird calls. And let’s be honest, there is very little “reality” in Reality TV. Most of the shows are scripted from the opening scene until the conclusion with whatever problem the “stars” were facing is solved and squared away, wrapped in a pretty red bow. But there are a handful of shows, real or scripted, that I watch in my dow...
Today’s edition of the Phillips County News marks the 20th edition of the paper with me at the helm as skipper. What that means is that for the past five months I have tortured you, dear readers, with misspellings of names, failure to cover important stories and more than a few typos as I learn my new beat here in Phillips County. The good news is that I am becoming more and more comfortable with the area and wonderful people that make up this community. People have welcomed me here with open arms – though a handful of people still are...
My typical week during the summer as editor of the PCN breaks down like this: 60 hours working, 49 hours sleeping, three hours trying to get my car to start and the last 56 hours slapping mosquitoes off my skin. I had heard all the stories about the little flying cannibals that Phillips County Folk spend all summer swatting and I was 100-percent sure that they were overblown. Well, I can bumpily tell you that I am now officially a member of Phillips County as I have been attacked by these skeeters so much that last night I played pink-welt...
Well, it’s official, I am a soccer, er, football…whatever. The round ball game, played by the world’s masses, I am officially a fan…but with a catch. Last week I wondered if I indeed liked to watch soccer. After nearly 13-hours spent perched on my recliner in front of the idiot-box watching “the world’s most popular sport” this weekend, I knew that I was a soccer fan at the conclusion of the Costa Rica vs. Greece match. The match was excellent, a back and forth tilt in which the team from Costa Rica was forced to play with one less player o...
After nearly 40 years of despising everything about soccer, I think I have become a fan of the “world’s most popular sport.” On Sunday afternoon I watched what I believe was one of the most exiting sporting events I have witnessed in the last couple of years as the United States Soccer team took on Portugal. The two teams played to a 2-2 tie with the Americans giving up a last second goal to allow the Portuguese to knot the match. The conclusion of this match marked the first time I have ever watched an entire soccer match. I’m not sure wh...
Last week in this column, I chirped about how happy my family and I were in our new house. It was only a couple of hours after I wrote said column that I got a call from my wife telling me that we had to flee the comforts of the house as there was a snafu with the closing. It seems that we moved into the home sooner than the homeowner would have liked and miscommunications between the relators and the gentleman selling the home left the whole deal up in the air. Things went from happy and comfortable to irritated and prickly in an instance....
The past 72-hours of my life have been a whirlwind of box-lugging, back –breaking bliss. On Friday afternoon my family and I finally closed on our new house here in Malta and many people have asked me “are you all moved in?” The answer is yes, for the most part, we are all technically moved in. There is a huge difference, however, between physically having all our stuff moved into our home verses having everything unpacked. Over the last three days my wife, daughter and myself have spent hour after hour cutting packing tape, emptying cardboard...
The Romans referred to the dog days as diēs caniculārēs and associated the hot weather during the days with the star Sirius – the Dog Star – and believed it to be an evil time when the “sea boiled” and “burning fevers” ensued. Sounds like dinner at my Mother-in-law’s house, but I digress. The Old Farmer’s Almanac lists the period of the dog days as running from July 3 through August 11, also pointing to the Dog Star but adding that this is the time of year with the least amount of rainfall in the Northern Hemisphere. Before I became a “journali...
The response to the color pages of the Phillips County News last week was incredible. The verdict is in, your votes have been counted and yes, the world looks more wonderful in color. The only drawback from the color pages last week was the delay in the paper’s delivery. It is a great honor to know that the PCN is looked forward to each week – the fact still leaves my stomach in knots each Wednesday morning. I did all I could to warn people that the paper would be late on Wednesday, but many didn’t get the message and were turned away empty...
No two snowflakes are alike, the old saying tells us, and I have no reason not to believe this as fact. My time working at newspaper has taught me that like those snowflakes, no two people have the same handwriting. Case in point, my wife’s handwriting versus mine. Charity writes in lovely, legible script. I, on the other hand, write in scratchy, unreadable blobs of inky confusion. It is the reason that she writes the well wishes on all the greeting cards we send to friends and family. It is the reason that I record every word of every i...
Now I know that most of you don’t know me well enough to really care, one way or another, about where I fall on important issues such as mill levies and the like. Though I am now a taxpayer – and soon to be homeowner/buyer – in Phillips County, I am so new to the area that an editorial on why I support the levy being proposed by the Phillips County Sheriff’s Office may, at first, leave you thinking “who cares?” Well, I care. Since I am looking forward to becoming a permanent fixture in Phillips County – sorry to disappoint anyone – this is a ma...
While trying to come up with a column idea for this week’s paper I stumbled across a website which listed all of the holidays in May. The list started off with what I will call the “real” holidays for the month, i.e. Mother’s, Armed Forces and Memorial Days. These are time-tested holidays, true blue and above board. However, the longer I read the list of “national” days, the more my head hurt. I did a little research on the topic of how to create a “National” day and found that the first step is to contact your local congress person, tell th...
Writing a weekly column is sort of like doing laundry. You know in the back of your mind that it needs to be done, but when it is time to really pull the trigger, isn’t it easier just to wear a T-shirt that is 20 years old and socks with holes in them? That, friends, is an awful analogy. And this is going to be an awful column. I have been wracking my brain all week trying to come up with a topic and in the end I got nothing. Zip and Zero. Nada and less. But I have to fill this space somehow because how many “tell them you saw it in the Phi...
On Tuesday afternoon, Malta superintendent of schools Kris Kuehn was notified of a bomb threat at the high school. Kuehn said in a press release that the situation was significant enough to reflect a possible imminent threat to the students and staff and canceled school for Wednesday. That choice was the absolute correct one to make for the school and the community. In this day and age, for a variety of reasons, threats like this can’t be viewed as pranks or April Fools jokes. They must be taken seriously. The mainstream media, almost daily i...
I’m only 41 – 177 in dog years – and that will seem young to some of you, dear readers, and others will think it’s time for me to join AARP, but lately I’ve been feeling my age. It’s not because of my creaking knees or the surplus of hair growing from my ears (Egad, what purpose do they serve?) It’s not because I sometimes hear my favorite song in an elevator or that my eyebrows are starting to look like caterpillars. No, gang, I’m feeling old because lately I can’t seem to remember anyone’s name. If you are not named “Donny,” “Marco,” ...
