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What we mean when we say post-secondary education

I congratulate the self-starters of the world, those who have found success all by themselves, without needing anything but a minimal education and a load of chutzpah. You are an inspirational few. And I congratulate, equally, those of you whose families handed down enough to sustain you, to stake you to a beginning that would help you cultivate whatever you can. You are blessed. I am in neither of those groups. I land squarely in a much, much larger pool of folks, a big pool where we work some hard physical tasks for a while until we realize that, say, refinishing furniture ...

We are compelled to look back

We are compelled to look back on this day. Mostly because it is the anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001 – this is being written on Sunday. But also because the world has lost its most compelling monarch, who was a bridge to a past that is setting sail with her death. Good-bye, Elizabeth II. Fare thee well. Though our opinions of her will differ, I acknowledge here that, to me, she was an example of commitment and duty. Yes, her commitments came with some impressive fringe benefits. But her example is worth noting. She shouldered more than a nation; she shouldered, in many ways, the ...

Suicide in the family

The paternal side of our family made a beeline from Sweden to Hamilton County circa 1850s. So, six generations later, some of us have moved a whole 10 miles. On the maternal side, mom's ancestors took a 100 years to get here via Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Arkansas, landing in north ...

The Elks Club is woven into our lives

I know Webster City is still on the radar of so many people whose lives intersected in this small, marvelous Iowa town. I know because I hear from them. Heck, we hear from them. Just last week, we heard from Debbie Long Hatz, whose father once managed the Elks Club before the membership became insolvent. She had returned for her 55th class reunion, a graduate who moved on and created a beautiful life, but whose memories are firmly rooted in a town that has hovered in the 8,000 population category for most of my lifetime. Her letter to the editor appeared on this page last ...

The number to call is 988.

We hear a lot these days about mental health, most often tied to news reports in which someone has ended up dead. But mental health isn’t a topic that should be limited to a post mortem discussion; it’s a very alive reality we must all face in one way or another, sometimes daily. A conversation with the living, a trained voice to defuse a crisis and therefore reduce the number of tragic outcomes, is now accessible through a new national crisis line that went live Saturday. The number to call is 9-8-8. Perhaps someone in your family struggles with depression, or post traumatic ...

Far too close to home

I guess I wonder what we are waiting for. Permission to be fed up? Permission to act? We watched, didn’t we? One after another, mass shootings took down innocent people — CHILDREN — at Sandy Hook, in Uvalde. We listened, didn’t we? To the attempts to soothe. To the attempts to convince us the victims were in the prayers of politicians who then failed to act. We waited, didn’t we? For something, anything, that would stop the killing of innocent people. We wondered, didn’t we, how our elected officials could go through a single day without moving towards a ...