I never thought I would be voluntarily writing, let alone someone publishing my work. I never applied myself in high school, I was much more concerned with running in circles and soaring over the top of a band with my instrument of choice, the trumpet. Some may know I took a gap year and ...
There are universal questions we all have. Is there a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow? In golf, what is an albatross? Is it possible to NOT encounter a detour in Iowa during the summer? What exactly is the difference between jelly and jam? And who actually decided to be the first ...
I was out and about this past weekend, and I met someone new. Now, this isn't odd in itself as I do not know the world's population over; however, the conversation that transpired is what was truly the oddity. In fact, it was one thing that the person said in particular that has stuck with ...
Being an impatient kid, my mother often said, “Mike, keep your shirt on!” This didn’t compel me to wait, but it gave me an idea about gifts for my uncle, Archie. At Christmastime and birthdays, I started buying him gifts of dress shirts, because I didn’t know what to get him! He ...
Week 15 of the session was a short week. We debated bills on Wednesday and Thursday in the House. Many of the bills we debated were bills that were amended in the Senate earlier in the week and sent back to the House for consideration. House File 317, a bill that I filed known as the ...
If you've ventured around Toledo for any sort of time or frankly just haven't been spending your days under a rock, then you'll have heard of, or at least seen, our Mayor Brian Sokol. A six foot man usually cruising around town in his massive black pickup, Sokol has been the Mayor of Toledo ...
Finally, the opportunity to relieve all those little and mild irritations that bug us so much. Pet Peeves! Those actions of others that just simply annoy us, (er, I mean, me). Now to be fair, they're not like "root canal" sufferings but just those tiny little disturbances that get on that ...
What’s fascinating about ladders is that you can make them out of anything and into anything! My neighbor in Newton leaned his ladder against his two-story house for years. When he sold the house, the new neighbors leaned their ladder against the house for several more years! The more ...
After completing the second “funnel” where Senate bills have to be passed through a House committee to remain active, we are now entering a phase of the session where budget work is more intense in the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees, and floor action is more sporadic. This ...
I've read books. I've written books. I love books, but I haven't always. I grew up in a family of readers, in a house where if you trip, often enough, it was a paperback underfoot. My ma read many subjects while mainly focusing on crime. If there’s any piece of literature that has a ...