Here are some things I didn’t know before today: Jerita Nelson loves shoes as much — maybe more — than I do. AnNyce Kelting Hoff knows that my mother, who was a dear friend of her mother, would have had a cup of coffee front and center with her dessert at the Lenten Luncheon on ...

A convention program many years ago left a lasting impression on me. I have remembered its message all these years since. The presentation was entitled “You Are Who You Are Because of Where You Were When” — or something similar. Dr. Massey, a professor from a Colorado university, was ...

The best April Fool joke to completely blind side me was pulled off by my reporters at one of the newspapers I edited during the early 1980s. They were a spunky crew: Two graduates from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut; the son of the guy who managed Madison Square Garden; a ...

When I was a kid I enjoyed listening to older folks talk about the changes they had seen during their lifetimes and their first-time experiences. First time driving a tractor, first time seeing an airplane, first time they had electricity on their farm … I enjoyed their stories. Thinking ...

Zipping down today’s interstate highways it’s easy to forget what Iowa’s highways were like just 70 years ago. Too young to remember? Well, let me fill you in. Though some two-lane highways were being widened at the time, many of Iowa’s primary roads and bridges were too narrow for ...

This is for you with pain in your eyes. Years ago, I stood where you stand. I wrote those words way back in 1987 when I was managing editor of a Connecticut newspaper and a volunteer rape crisis counselor. I remember it was in the spring because I had just announced I was leaving the job ...