We’re into the open water fishing season of 2019. In fact, summer fishing isn’t that far away. Sometimes we get too wound up in the details of catching fish, and that’s okay. Oftentimes minor details can play a large role in how many fish we catch, and how big those fish are. There ...
The big thing around Iowa this time of year is high school graduations. It’s been 53 years since I experienced this rite of passage and it appears that some things haven’t change. Graduates still don hot gowns and square hats, march to “Pomp and Circumstance” and are handed a diploma as a reward for 13 years of hard work. And mothers still cry when their baby walks by. Have you ever wondered how we came to incorporate these odd traditions into high school graduation ceremonies? So did I. So I did some research. First, let’s tackle that gown. Technically, it’s known as ...
Last weekend I took a little trip north for an overnight, driving on one of those wonders of modern transportation: the interstate highway. Fast, direct, no muss, no fuss. Not even any potholes that I noticed. There’s also not much to see. Oh, I do have landmarks that I study each time I go by, like the tall sculpture made from graduated sizes of one-bottom plows stacked one atop the other that sits next to a lovely landscaped farm pond. I know I’m barely into Minnesota when I pass the Round Prairie Lutheran Church. The white frame church sits up imposingly high close to ...
May is National Foster Care Month, a time set to recognize foster parents, family members, mentors, volunteers and child welfare professionals for all the support they provide youth and children in foster care. It can also be a good time to consider how you personally can make a difference in the life of a child in foster care. According to the Iowa Department of Human Services, in 2018 178 children from Webster County, 45 children from Hamilton County, 38 children from Wright County, 19 children from Pocahontas County, and 47 children from Calhoun County were in foster care. The ...
“Hamilton The Community,” knowing your neighbors. This is what Rick Young, Hamilton County supervisor and Hamilton Hometowns board chairman, will work to do over the coming months. He will escort a few individuals “out of their own community silo” and take them to another Hamilton ...
I've been thinking about heroes lately. A hero may be your basic, everyday hero: the neighbor who plows out your driveway after a snowstorm without even a phone call to ask if he can bring over his big John Deere with the loader bucket, the old family friend who stops by with two $20 bills to help out with the cost of going to see your ill brother in another state, the friend who comes over with two kinds of ice cream after your oral surgery. Those folks have all been my heroes at one time or another, whether they realized it or not. Some heroes are of the flashier type: ...
