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Four dead in Ohio

Local Columns

The year I was a junior in high school, four college students were shot on a campus in Ohio. The setting was Kent State, a public university. On May 4, 1970, a rally protesting the expansion of the United States’ involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia went sideways; 28 National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students. Kent State wasn’t the only site of pushback then. College protests were escalating. There was a real desire on the part of many students to resist any kind of escalation of war because, well, they didn’t want to be a part ...

Leadership is listening. Listening is empathy.

Local Columns

As I have stepped into this role of leadership, I have come to realize that I quite literally had no idea what I was getting myself into. What I thought the position was when I declared my candidacy to now is a complete 180 turn. No one really knows what goes into a respective position until they sit in the chair of those that came before you. I have also learned extremely quickly that the people that make up your given organization are what makes the wheels turn; they are the ones that the public sees and the ones that the public form an opinion of, and they impact how your department ...

Words we no longer use

Local Columns

“Jeepers Creepers, where’d ya get those peepers?” Now there’s a phrase you probably haven’t heard for a while. Perhaps you’ve never heard it. The line is from a song recorded by Louis Armstrong in the late 1930s. At the time of the recording, the word jeepers was quite common but I haven’t heard it used for years. I recall hearing jeepers as an exclamation back when I was a kid. For example, “Jeepers, that’s a swell bicycle!” Peepers, of course, referred to the eyes. And swell was an adjective; nowadays it is a verb. There are many other 20th century words that ...

The value of remembering

Local Columns

Reflections on the 9/11 tragedies are vivid in most of my friends' and families' memories. It might be hard to understand if you did not live through it, but it haunts most of us. My parents compared it to the way they felt when Pearl Harbor was bombed during World War II. It was shattering. Twenty-four years later, it’s still vivid. We can’t forget, and we shouldn’t forget. We need to help our younger generations understand the immense terror felt all across America. The planes stopped flying. The cell phones were flooded, and family members were saying goodbye, trapped in ...

Joining The Army

Local Columns

Very few experiences have impacted my life as strongly as the Army. The Salvation Army, that is. Uncle Sam didn’t want me for the U.S. Army. It was 18 years ago about right now that I interviewed for the position of development and communications director for The Salvation Army of Des Moines. The job began a few weeks later. Subsequently, I was assigned to also assist several other Iowa Salvation Army Corps with their development and communications efforts. My hiring followed a four-month period of unemployment. I had walked away from a job and a career that was making me ill. This ...

If you're fed up with a politician, vote him/her out

Letters to Editor

To the editor: I’m sure that math teachers are trying to but it’s not getting through. I guess young people don’t care and old people like me must be diminished. They say rich people make up 1% then the rest of us working people are 99%. Each person gets one vote. The last I knew 99% was 99 times more powerful than 1%. If your politician is catering to the rich and not you then VOTE THEM OUT! If you’re as fed up as I am show them. People have the power. That’s Democracy — save it! P.S. Discovery is seeing what everyone else has seen but thinking what no one else has ...