Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 60
Rarely do men and women seem free, even for a moment, from the evils that have plagued human beings for millennium: war, poverty, famine, slavery, racism, diseases, pestilence, and natural disasters. The U.S. armed forces first attacked the Taliban in Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, and now, the twin wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are winding down after two decades, wars that have cut short many human lives and caused painful, debilitating injuries. On the horizon is a menacing conflict with China...
In recent days a native Icelander named Egill Bjarnason published a book, “How Iceland Changed the World.” I wonder about that title’s bold claim, but nonetheless he writes well, is entertaining. He begins with the Vikings, and then steps forward, chapter by chapter, until he finishes in the 21st century. Along the way, he brings in plenty of fascinating details about the island’s towns, people, weather, government, and the Northern Lights, an enjoyable and readable geography primer. In his int...
As the year 1776 unfolded, American colonists were confronted with the question of independence. Some favored it, others rejected it, and a third group remained uncommitted. This political question caused hard feelings between colonial Americans. More and more colonists were forced to take sides in this bitter conflict. Some chose. Some refused. Battle lines were drawn. The question divided families, communities, churches, schools, and local governments. Those who spoke out in favor of separatin...
You and I, and all others who claim American citizenship, now have reason to celebrate a new Federal holiday, Juneteenth, our 12th legal public holiday. Last week, on Tuesday, June 15, the Senate unanimously passed legislation to make June 19, or Juneteenth, a national holiday. On Wednesday, June 16, the House passed it with only 14 “no” votes. On Thursday, June 17, President Joe Biden signed into law the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act in the White House’s East Room. In his remar...
How does one recognize great writing in a novel, a work of history, or a scientific treatise? The typical answers include: if it sells 5,000 copies, if it makes the “New York Times Best Seller” list, if it wins a literary prize, if a literary critic gives his or her stamp of approval, or if it is printed for decades. Each generation of young people discover for themselves the wealth of ideas that they can dig out of Plato’s Dialogues, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Essays, or Shakespeare’s plays. Th...
The 1921 race riot in Tulsa began on Monday, May 30, Memorial Day, when a young black man stepped into an elevator, tripped, and either grabbed a young white girl’s arm to steady himself, or stepped on her foot. She screamed. No one else witnessed what transpired on that elevator. Someone suspected a possible assault and called the police. He was 19 years old. His name was Dick Rowland. He shined shoes on Main Street. A number of Tulsa’s lawyers knew Dick, because he shined their shoes, but non...
In recent days, an editor at the New York Times asked readers to send in their wise words that they try to live by. The best responses appeared in two Sunday editions in April. A few examples follow. A Missouri resident named Dave Dillon said, “Always behave as if someone were watching.” Kristy McCray of Ohio, said she lives by the Platinum Rule. “Treat others as they wish to be treated.” Norma Douglas of Idaho, quoted her dad. “You are not better that anyone, but no one is better than you.” Ron...
William Shakespeare passed away on April 23, 1616, at the age of 53, leaving behind some 39 plays that he wrote alone or assisted in writing, for his acting company, the Kings’ Men. Two others in that company, John Heminges and Henry Condell, published in 1623, 36 of his plays in the First Folio. Of the 750 copies of the First Folio, only 235 remain in existence today. Heminges and Condell’s heroic editorial work preserved and saved from extinction the better of Shakespeare’s plays. We all w...
“When I was fifteen years old, I traveled the country giving speeches about the Constitution at American Legion halls for prize money. This was a scheme invented by my mom, a debate coach, to help pay for college. I would travel to big cities like Denver and Fresno, and win a bunch of money.” Those are the words of Heidi Schreck, a fast-talking, loud actress, at the beginning of her 2019 smash Broadway play, “What the Constitution Means to Me,” that she wrote and stars in. She re-enacts that te...
Two weeks ago, there appeared in “The New York Times Book Review” a review of Derk DelGaudio’s just-published memoir, Amoralman: A True Story, and Other Lies, even though he says, “It is not a memoir.” Rather, he says, “I had a story to tell about my days as a bust-out dealer, hired to cheat card players at a series of high-stakes poker games at a house in Beverly Hills. I told the story through a memoir.” In the the first half of the book, Derek tells of his early years growing up in Colorad...
In the first scene of William Shakespeare’s play “Julius Caesar,” a military official named Flavius reveals his disgust with a dashing military and political official named Julius Caesar, by asking, “Who else would soar above the view of men, And keep us all in servile fearfulness?” In the second scene, on a crowded street filled with people cheering for Julius Caesar as he passes by, he hears a single voice above the din, and asks, “Who is it in the press that calls on me? I hear a tongue shri...
A 17th century philosopher named René Descartes struggled to make sense of the mind-body problem. He understood that thoughts originate in the brain, but he observed that mental activity is ephemeral, without physical substance. How can this be? he wondered. Ever since, philosophers have called Descartes’s philosophy “dualism.” They concur that what occurs within the mind exists in a separate reality from what occurs in the physical world. The 16th century writer Michel de Montaigne tried...
In recent days, I reread Daniel Boorstin’s book, The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream. Boorstin trained as a historian, but in his 1961 book, he steps away from history long enough to peer deep into American’s modern-day thought processes. He identifies certain illusions that, he insists, hamper correct thinking. I would agree. Illusions abound in modern-day America. We wonder, “what is true, what is false, what is real, what is fake?” We fill our minds everyday with trucklo...
Four outgoing Presidents have boycotted the incoming President’s inauguration: John Adams, his son John Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren, and Andrew Johnson. The second President, John Adams, was first elected in 1796, by defeating Thomas Jefferson 71 electoral votes to 68. Four years later, in 1800, Jefferson won the election by defeating Adams 73 electoral votes to 65. A bitter Adams refused to attend Jefferson’s inauguration on March 4, 1801. Four men ran for President in 1824: Andrew Jac...
It is summer-time in Australia. While scrolling though YouTube in recent days, I came across a most unusual character from “Down Under.” Story-teller extraordinaire, adventurer, and filmmaker, Beau Miles sports a bright orange beard, a mop of wavy dark hair, an infectious smile, and speaks in Australian-accented English. “He has traveled to all corners of the globe on a shoestring budget, always in search of backwaters and backstories.” Beau achieved a PhD in Outdoor Education at Melbourne’s Uni...
The Kolyma Highway begins at the port of Magadan on Russia’s Pacific Ocean, heads north some distance, but then veers to the west, and ends at Yakutsk, a city of 311,000 people, deep in a Siberian wilderness called the taiga. Travelers see only spruce and fir trees in every direction. All together, this highway of gravel, mud, ice, and pavement that cuts through the endless forest extends across 2012 kilometers, or 1260 miles, of the Russian landscape. Early in the twentieth-century, the S...
An interesting anecdote appears in Barack Obama’s recently-published memoir, A Promised Hope. He recalls the day, a Friday, October 9, 2009, when he was stunned to learn that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee’s members, meeting in Oslo, Norway, announced that they had selected him. When told of the honor, Obama was incredulous. “For what?” he asked. The committee’s members explained that they had selected him, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation...
The first people to live in eastern Massachusetts were the Native Americans. A tribe called the Wampanoags lived on that rocky coast for perhaps 10,000 years. The Mayflower arrived at Plymouth Harbor on November 11, 1620, and aboard that ship were about 35 people who belonged to a small but extreme religious faction called the Pilgrims. These were Separatists, Englishmen and women who chose to illegally separate themselves from the Church of England. If not for the Wampanoags, more Pilgrims...
Only Palestinians live inside the Gaza Strip, a skinny stretch of flat coastal plain on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, sandwiched between Egypt and Israel. Gaza is only 25 miles long, and an average of four miles wide. Yet, 1.85 million Palestinians call it home. It is densely populated. It is impoverished. It suffers from 44% unemployment. Electrical power is now down to four hours per day. It is on, then it is off, a daily reminder that the Israeli’s control the flow of Diesel f...
In June of 1967, Israel’s army captured the Sinai and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and East Jerusalem and the West Bank from the Jordanians. Although Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in 1982, after brokering a deal with Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, “its occupation of the rest of the territory seized in 1967 is ongoing.” The West Bank is a landlocked strip of land, 2,263 square miles, sandwiched between Jordan to the east, and Israel to the north, west, and south. It is the geog...
Mark Twain once said, “The difference between the right word and the wrong word is really a large matter. ‘Tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” Some writers choose big words to fill up a typewritten page. For example, William F. Buckley, Jr. built an extensive vocabulary and pulled it out often to impress his readers. He once wrote, “I react against declamatory rudeness that is coercive in intent.” Now what did he mean? I think he meant to say that when he hears ano...
Ian Fleming divided his 7th James Bond novel, Goldfinger, into three parts: “Happenstance,” “Coincidence,” and “Enemy Action.” Three times Bond intervened in Auric Goldfinger’s diabolical plans to enrich himself, and after the third time, Goldfinger had had enough. He seized 007. “Mr. Bond,” Goldfinger said, “they have a saying in Chicago: ‘Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it’s enemy action.’” Coincidences startle us. Two people discover that they have the same bir...
On a calm summer day in 1823, in northwest South Dakota, a mountain man named Hugh Glass experienced absolute terror when he stumbled across a she-grizzly bear and her two cubs. He was alone. She stood on her hind legs, swatted his rifle away, then his pistol, but he held tight to his knife. Few of us will ever experience first-hand a fright of this magnitude, a life-and-death wrestle with a hot, mad mother grizzly bear. The author Frederick Manfred described in his book Lord Grizzly how at...
In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published her work, The Guns of August. In it, she described the thirty days in August of 1914, when Europe's governments prodded their countries into a Great War. Germany and Austria-Hungary vs. the Allies: France, Great Britain, Russian, and the U.S. One of Tuchman's book reviewers wrote, “The holocaust of August was the prelude to four bitter years of deadlocked war that cost a generation of European lives.” Indeed, the Great War was horrific, and cau...
Certain individuals desire a headstrong official to govern. They submit to that man or woman who claims all power belongs to him or herself. They follow. They obey. They do what they are told. They cease thinking for themselves. They refuse to contradict. They discard their own thoughts. They appreciate a monarch’s talent for quick far-reaching decisions. Politicians call this right-of-center government “authoritarianism.” Other individuals want a democracy, a republic, a sharing of power...
