Category: Features

Family Holiday Gathering During COVID

Ken Marich We all know how hard it is to celebrate the holidays without family members around the table. My daughter, Debbie Wallace, created a solution. She used family photographs, enlarged the heads to life-sized and mounted them on wood paint mixing sticks. When these photos arrived, Barb and I mounted the sticks to our…

Whimsy for Today

Becky Kueker 2020 made me a different person, and as my husband often says, in a very scary way. I kind of like that definition though. You can actually use sarcasm to punch someone out. I never would have considered it before but now, bam, hard left to the jaw. You know there are so…

Word of the Month: Sublime

David Zapatka My friend Mike Schneider and I were discussing this quote from The Urantia Book recently: “Such spirit-born individuals are so unmotivated in life that they can calmly stand by while their fondest ambitions perish and their keenest hopes crash; they positively know that such catastrophes are but the redirecting cataclysms which wreck one’s temporal creations…

This I Have Learned: Happy Valentine’s Day from Around the World!

Mary Jo Bellner-Swartzberg Much has been written about Valentine’s Day over the centuries. Shrouded in mystery, Valentine’s Day has the vestiges of Roman, Catholic, and pagan traditions. History has indicated that Valentine greetings date back to the Middle Ages. It may not surprise anyone that Valentine’s Day is big business—in 2019 Americans spent $20.7 billion for Valentine’s…

Cowgirls Don’t Ride Sidesaddle

Stuart Watkins Cowgirls know how to help a mare give birth. They know how to ride the back-forty searching for strays. Cowgirls barrel-race in rodeos and dance the Texas Two Step. They sip coffee from a tin can by the campfire. Cowgirls know the difference between a rifle and a pistol. They know the difference…

Not all Poems Rhyme

Stuart Watkins conquests and keeping score was my game before meeting you you gotta believe look into my eyes and hear my words you caught my eye long before we met noticed your smile, heard your laughter, kindness touched everyone you met timid and shy, yet brave and strong, my heart was drawn by the…

U.S. Military History: Presidents Day

Ross Dunfee While Presidents Day is a federal holiday, celebrated on the third Monday of February, it is not really a national holiday. Splitting hairs? In 1968, Congress passed the Monday Holiday Act for observance of Washington’s birthday, Memorial Day, and Veterans Day to be celebrated on a Monday, but the actual dates for the…