The trauma of geekhood

August 4, 2025

Being a teenage geek (or nerd) is sad enough but when your kids find out it hurts. I remember the day my daughter realized the truth of my past. Arriving home from work one afternoon some 30 years ago, I discovered my then-about-16-year-old daughter reading her mother’s and my old high school yearbooks. She glared at me with that condescending look girls learn in “Womanhood 101.” The conversation took place long ago but this is as close as I can remember it: “What’s up?” I asked. “Just reading the autographs in your yearbooks,” she responded with a hint of ...

Webster City, it’s been an honor

July 29, 2025

Serving as your representative on the Webster City Council for the past 12 years has been one of the greatest privileges of my life. The pride and fulfillment I’ve felt during this time are difficult to put into words. With my current term concluding at the end of this year, it’s again time for reflection — a ritual familiar to any public servant approaching an election year. And this year, my reflections have led me to a clear and heartfelt decision. As I near my 45th birthday next month, I find myself more aware than ever of time’s quiet passage. When I first joined the ...

Staying awake

July 27, 2025

Name the most difficult physical task you can imagine. Lifting a heavy object? Out running an angry bear? Jumping over a wide chasm? How about this one: staying awake when your mind and body want to sleep? You know the feeling. It’s been a long day and you’ve enjoyed a good evening meal. Now you’re at a meeting and the air conditioner just isn’t doing its job. As the speaker drones on and on, your eyelids begin to droop and your eyeballs roll back as if to examine their sockets. Your mind begins to shut down. Your head begins to nod. Suddenly, your head nods a bit too far ...

Anger management: Using soft words

July 20, 2025

As a twice-married man and a father I have been made fully aware of all my faults. One of those faults is my temper. Over the years I have learned to control that temper … until someone pushes all the right buttons. Back in Sunday school days we had to memorize a Bible verse every week. One that I’ve never forgotten is Proverbs 15:1 — “A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger.” That verse has been helpful over the years, because when I am angry soft words come with difficulty. I thought of these things one day when I stopped to pick up some dry ...

Coming home

July 15, 2025

A friend of mine once described coming home as “touching base.” I always took it to mean recharging. Resetting. Like unplugging the computer to get the thing to work the way you want. I thought of this when writing about the amazing Amelia Oliver, a smart performer who’s gracing the Webster City Community Theatre stage in its most recent production, “Little Shop of Horrors.” Like Amelia, I came home. The first time I came home, I had just graduated from Iowa State with a journalism degree and spent the months following working for the Daily Freeman-Journal until my computer ...

Love and marriage the second time around

July 13, 2025

On a quiet evening a short time before my first wife, Cindy, passed away, we engaged in a conversation about the future. We were looking ahead to retirement. Cindy had recently lost her parents. My father had died 20 years earlier. A few months earlier, I purchased larger life insurance policies for each of us. “If I go first,” I explained, “you’re free to remarry or not. I just don’t want you to have to marry someone for financial reasons.” I had seen that happen and it wasn’t pretty. Cindy explained that she wasn’t sure she would remarry if I was the first to go. ...