Like Christmas trees and turkey dinners, the red kettles and bell ringers of The Salvation Army are a traditional element of the holiday season. Just about everyone has seen the kettles and heard the jingling bells over the years. And hopefully, just about everyone has put some donations in ...
Use of tobacco in all forms can be hazardous to one’s health. That is a fact, not open to dispute. Yet cigarettes, cigars, pipe tobacco and smokeless tobacco are legal for sale in all 50 states, with some restrictions. That is a puzzle to many who wonder why federal laws intended to ...
For a child, few things generate the sense of excitement that a swing can. Climbing into a swing and zooming back and forth can give a child the feeling that they’re soaring to the sky like an astronaut or a superhero. But often only able-bodied children can enjoy that sensation. Any ...
More than a century has passed since the guns fell silent in the war then known as the Great War — the one we now call World War I. It was late morning in France when the armistice ending that conflagration took effect. All those years ago, many Europeans and Americans expected the ...
Many years ago, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley told his constituents that he would stay in close touch with them by visiting every Iowa county at least one time each year. Since his initial election to the Senate in 1980, Iowa’s senior senator has been faithful to that promise. Grassley takes ...
It has been said that the art of politics is compromise. Mention that these days and it is entirely likely you will be accused of being a traitor by those on one of the polls to which political discourse seems to have been relegated. Perhaps both sides will flail away at you. Former President ...
John ‘‘Jack’’ Etzel never forgot what his education empowered him to achieve in life. The Fort Dodge native was born Oct. 2, 1930, about a year after the stock market crash plunged the United States into the Great Depression. He graduated from Fort Dodge Senior High School, where ...
Faced with significant problems with their community’s sanitary sewer system, leaders in Sac City are opting to tackle the situation instead of leaving it for some future generation to deal with. And they’re doing it with the help of a $1.28 million grant from the United States Department ...
All across America there is a realization that our nation’s criminal justice system needs major changes. Preventing crimes is a never-ending struggle. When misdeeds occur, ensuring the fair treatment in the law enforcement and judicial systems of individuals accused of wrong-doing remains a ...
There are exciting things afoot in Fort Dodge. Fort Dodge and Webster County are well-positioned to prosper if creative leaders in government and the private sector leverage assets and resources appropriately to take advantage of the very real opportunities for business and commercial ...
Before the spring of 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no system in place to track migrant children who were separated from their families. That was the case even though, it now turns out, the Trump administration, in its first months in office, had already begun wrenching scores of ...
Fort Dodge voters fed up with balky internet connections have a chance to do something about it on Tuesday. On their general election ballots they will find a referendum question asking them if their city government should have the power to establish a municipal broadband utility. We ...
Especially at major powers in the collegiate sports world, purely amateur athletics has been a myth for many years. Under-the-table gifts by well-to-do boosters have ensured that. Now, however, even the pretense may be about to end. This week, the NCAA Board of Governors voted to allow ...
Generations of Iowa Central Community College students have crossed the campus lugging hefty textbooks. Now, many of them head to class with fewer books and a slim electronic device that enables them to access virtually unlimted information, write papers and take exams. This semester, for ...
Unlike most holidays, Halloween really has no serious purpose. It’s primarily an opportunity for harmless, child-oriented fun. Costumes, trick-or-treat activities and an opportunity to engage in make-believe combine to make Halloween a favorite of youngsters and those still young at ...
Most of us can recall from our school days a teacher whose excellence set them apart from their colleagues. We may well have wished that all educators were as good as they were at motivating their classroom charges to learn and achieve. These teacher standouts wanted their students to ...
We know no one in our area who reacted to the attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue a year ago with anything other than sorrow and anger. We doubt that you know anyone with a different opinion, either. But a microscopically tiny number of people viewed the assault, in which 11 worshippers were ...
Donald Trump made himself a political celebrity in 2016 by persuading news media to talk about — Donald Trump. He did it mainly by the expedient of saying outrageous things — by trolling, in the parlance of social media — and it worked. It’s still working, though these days as often to ...
The Humboldt community has been wrestling with the problem of establishing a proper animal shelter for about a year. Mary Moffitt has apparently just solved that problem. Moffitt, who lives in California, owns farm land near Dakota City. She’s also an animal lover who’s especially fond ...
We Americans have a habit of bragging about our feats of technology. Our chief economic and military rivals — namely Russia and China — seldom do. They prefer to keep their secrets. No one in this country is certain, then, how far the state-controlled economies of those nations have gone ...