As a kid, the last Monday of May was always called Decoration Day. We certainly didn’t shop, but instead stopped to honor the men and women who gave everything for our freedom. We went to the cemetery for the military services, walked past the fallen, placed fresh flowers and colorful ...
Emergency rooms are such weird places, am I right? I mean, you go in there when you're sick and feel like death warmed over, and they usually ask you to take a seat. I have been in my fair share of emergency rooms; I've even had my fair share of ambulance rides. All of which were ...
Dear Graduate, Have you ever looked back and thought to yourself, "if I only knew then what I know now.” Or how about this one, when I was about 15 or 16, my Mom & Dad were just not very smart people but by the time I reached my mid-20s, I was quite surprised how smart they had ...
One of the significant bills passed in the last few days of the session was the update to the Iowa Code on Youth Employment, Senate File 542. SF 542 aims to update Iowa’s youth labor laws and expand opportunities for teenagers to work in Iowa. This section of code has not been updated in ...
Dean, Times sure do change. I recall vividly as a teenager, on a small dairy farm in Bremer County, IA, having to use a pitch fork to remove cow dung matted with dried cow dung from pens and gutters. I had to use a silage fork to break loose frozen silage from the silo after climbing up ...
For as long as I can remember, my favorite part of speech has been the always acceptable alliteration. The dictionary defines an alliteration as “the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.” As a local newsman, I love thinking of ...
Dear Graduate, Have you ever looked back and thought to yourself, "if I only knew then what I know now.” Or how about this one, when I was about 15 or 16, my Mom & Dad were just not very smart people but by the time I reached my mid-20s, I was quite surprised how smart they had ...
The House took last week, Week 16, off as the Senate caught up with their work, then we came back this week and began passing budget bills in preparation for the end of session. Property taxes have been one of the hottest issues we’ve heard about from our constituents this session as ...
My mom had “mom”-isms, pearls of wisdom meant for instruction which she readily applied to my many moments of idiocies — wasted axioms of truth on me. One of the “mom”-isms was when I was scowling, she quipped, “Be careful, Mike, or your face will freeze like that!” Or her ...
I don't know it to be true, but I like to think that when I was just a chunky little baby, my big sister, just a kid herself, flipped me the bird, and I returned the favor. The Unholy Middle Finger, The Bird, The One Hand Salute, all of these are just synonyms for a single finger on the ...