To the Editor:
Mike Franken was born and raised in Lebanon (rural Sioux County), Iowa, the youngest of nine children. His mother was a school teacher and his father had a machine shop where Mike learned to repair John Deere farm equipment. Graduated from the University of Nebraska where he received an ROTC…
Letter to the Editor,
The Chariton City Lakes Advisory Commission wishes to acknowledge the volunteers who came out and helped and the businesses who donated to the City Lakes Clean Up Day on Saturday, April 23rd, 2022. We know we had volunteers and donors representing several groups: Chariton River Valley Ducks …
Dear Editor,
To the Editor:
I Peter 2:24 “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes ye were healed.”
Ursula Bingham died last week of complications from heart disease. I got to talk to her husband, Clint a few hours before she died. “She’s getting ready to meet Jesus,” he simply said.
To Dave Paxton - If only you would state your opinions similar to the Feb. 2 editorial instead of being quite so inflammatory as is typical of your columns…. President Biden is not the same as AOC any more than Trump is the same as John McCain or Bob Dole (unfortunately on that count). I do …
With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may a…
One of the worst things about my semi-retirement came last Wednesday afternoon when I was home glued to the television watching the storming of the U.S. Capitol. Like most of the 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, I didn’t like the outcome and have lots of questions why an addl…
I have friends who started playing golf and tennis as five-year-olds and are in their 60’s and still playing. My dad didn’t start playing golf until he was 66, but played nine holes on his 89th birthday. I started playing baseball when I was five or six, but stopped playing after my sophomor…
If you do the math on the $900 billion bi-partisan COVID-19 relief bill (that both Iowa senators and all of our representatives except Steve King voted for) you wonder how in the name of heaven any of the people who voted for it could do it without being struck by lightning.
Letter to the Editor,
I’m watching NFL football on Sunday and Russell Wilson throws a towering pass to his receiver who has beaten a Cowboys rookie safety. The guy catches it in stride, puts the ball in one hand and starts high stepping into the end zone about 10 yards out. That’s when the rookie never stops play…
I’m not exactly sure the political strategy of mass e-mailing newspapers campaign lies, fundraising pleas and the like, because if I actually opened every e-mail, I would sit at my desk eight hours and get nothing else done. It is not a good plan for semi-retirement.
Since the 2020 presidential election has turned into an “identity politics” circus, created by Joe Biden and his handlers when he announced he would name an African American woman to be his running mate, I’d like to make this observation.
You are blessed when you have the opportunity to make friends with an older generation. But you’re saddened when you invariably outlive them.
In preparing for my retirement in another month, I cleaned out the office I’ve occupied for the past 30 years and moved to a smaller office across the hall. I’m guessing I tossed a small dumpster worth of stuff that I hadn’t looked at in years and our new publisher will have no use for.
I just have one question for the young anarchists, Black Lives Matter agitators and Democrats who sit idly by while the country burns.
There’s any number of quasi socialist/communist organizations emboldened by the current racial tensions the United State finds itself in. One that started sending me e-mails is WFAN (Women’s Food and Ag Network) which sound innocuous enough. Something that people on FarmersOnly.com might go to.
My parents were in their mid 40s when America was set on fire during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and the Vietnam War protests. I’m pretty sure they were terrified, not only because they had two draft age sons, but the safety and security my dad thought he had helped establish by f…
The first car I ever (sort of) owned was a 1965 Mercury Comet my brother and I got from our grandfather for painting his two-story farm house. That was in 1968. My brother drove it a couple of years before he went off to college and it was handed down to me in 1970 and I drove it until I wor…
Hallelujah! We’re going to have summer baseball and softball. I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel, even with the seemingly endless rules governing the opening. You might get some eye rolling, but players and fans aren’t going to balk at all about how we’re going to have to play.
Three community newspapers from really fine cities (Centerville, Knoxville and Pella) were closed last week. For the guy who operates three newspapers between those three communities it was a shock.
I saw my barber Dave at the hardware store and started to tear up. Frankly, he looks a whole lot worse than I do. I’m not sure who barbers get to cut their hair, but it’s likely he needs to go there before he starts cutting regular customer’s hair.
Don’t look for any whining from this newspaper guy involving the Coronavirus. We’ve taken it in the shorts as a business, but we’re still open and running. The counties my newspapers serve have one COVID-19 positive test. I have been able to be with my kids and grandkids throughout the six w…
Is it just me, or is the progressive, left-wing media and Trump haters in politics pulling for the country not to come out from under COVID-19’s destruction of the economy? Is it possible that these people so hate Donald Trump that they would punish and continue to punish citizens and citize…
Doing what I do about every Monday morning, grabbing a cup of coffee at a local convenience store, I ran into a guy I know who was heading to work. “Staying out of trouble?” he asked. It was that question guys ask each other all of the time, more in the way of “Hi, how ya doin’?” as opposed …
For a long time I thought the coronavirus was a joke. Overblown by a national media wanting to bring down President Trump. I still think part of that is true. But I’m not laughing.
I don’t want to be flippant about the Coronavirus, but gee whiz, if you listen to MSNBC or any of the nightly news programs, even Fox News, you’d think we are in the Dark Ages and the plague is wasting the world.
I have watched my retirement accounts get blasted by stock market gyrations caused by the coronavirus panic and watched endless minutes of news describing the disease in almost apocalyptic terms.
Word of my pending (semi) retirement is getting around and I’m getting a lot of “attaboys” and a few “it’s about damned time.” I’m also getting some pretty good advice from friends who have been retired; like how to stay out from under the feet of your wife.
The news from the Iowa High School Athletic Association in football brightened my day.
Having had a Hindu Rotary Exchange student in our home for a year and remembering the conversations we had about his religion and specifically “karma,” if I actually had been convinced, I’d say the Iowa Democrat Party is suffering from some serious bad karma.
Like a lot of people led by 21st Century “progressives,” the United Methodist Church is imploding under the almost insane leadership of people like Iowa Bishop Laurie Haller. Everything about Bishop Haller is about feelings over fact.
Couple of political observations on left-wing hair on fire activity.
My wife created a “new normal” the end of October when she moved in with her dad as he entered hospice care for terminal cancer. We lived together, apart, maintaining two households until mid-December when I moved in with her to help with his mounting care needs.
For the past 79 years, the Iowa Historical Society has published quarterly “The Annals of Iowa,” a journal of Iowa history that the newspaper has received like clockwork for all 38 years I’ve been around.
One of my favorite “poisen pen” letter to the editor writers, Jerry Ethell of Milo, died at the age of 82. A native of Lovilia, I never met Jerry, but printed dozens of her letters to the editor and had even more that had the “not for publication” line before the letter.
These are difficult times in the Paxton household as we do end of life care for my wife’s father, who still remains in his home and defies medical certainty. You gain incredible perspective on life as you live moment by moment with the ravages of old age and cancer.
There is actually reward in being nice (particularly at Christmas) and I’ve pledged to do it more often.
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