APRIL 27, 2026 Wages and salaries change with the times: My father shared stories about working for $1 per day, but that did include room and board. That would have been approximately 1929 and he was grateful for the job as a hired hand for a local area farmer. My first away from home job was detasseling corn. The payment…
Read MoreCategory: Opinion
Our citizen journalists
~a column by Colleen O’Brien In April of 2015, I wrote about a way to get the news other than via newspapers, broadcast, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other social media. An audacious new way of on-the-spot news reporting was named NewsByMe, unofficially known as “citizen journalists.” This little application on one’s phone made it possible for anyone to play reporter.…
Read MoreStupid is as stupid does, Part two
My continued contemplation about recent events has led me back to consider Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s Theory of Stupidity (an internet search for this theory will help you follow along with my suppositions). One is this past winter’s anti-ICE movement in Minnesota. The other are April’s “No Kings” rallies. Let’s start with Minnesota and especially the deaths of Renee Good and Alex…
Read MoreTrump and the growing class divide
~a column by Colleen O’Brien Why is it that American billionaires want to run their country into Third-World status? Stingy healthcare, high rate of birth deaths, lessening life spans, politicized public education, banned books, low incomes, soaring prices, unsafe bridges and tens of millions of potholes? Billionaires are eager to give a ton of money to a felon of a…
Read MorePope Leo comes to our aid, to the world’s aid
~a column by Colleen O’Brien “Iran is doing a very poor job, dishonorable some would say, of allowing oil to go through the Strait of Hormuz.” [BBC Apr 10, 2026] Trump, the poster boy of dishonor, mumbles this to his bedtime companion, Truth Social, who promptly sends it out to the world, which does not want it. I discount him…
Read MoreProperty taxes
April 10, 2026 Property taxes are a very complex issue. When you talk to 10 different legislators about how best to change the system, you will likely get 10 different responses. This week, however, the Senate accomplished something monumental by coming together to pass a substantial bill that casts a vision for the future. The bill passed 41-4 and now…
Read MorePills
~by Colleen O’Brien Before his tearing down the East Wing, before his renaming the Kennedy Center, before his bombing of fishing boats in the Caribbean and stealing a sovereign country’s leader and wife, before his posting a photo of Obama and Michelle as gorillas, before his “excursion” into the Middle East – actually, before he was elected – Trump promised…
Read MoreView from my window: My garden
March 29, 2026 You know that nursery rhyme, MARY, MARY, QUITE CONTRARY, HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? Well, historically mine has not had silver bells and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row! Last fall, as I was lifting the tomato cages off the dead plants, I vowed not to try a garden again. Weeds had engulfed the…
Read MoreWe DO know
~Colleen O’Brien “You know that. And everybody knows that.” This is an oft-spoken collection of words from a president who in the wee hours of every morning Tweets or Xs lies about any number of things medical, military, historic, artistic. He’s a blabbering mouth and the sheer repletion of lies shuts our brains down. For four years of the Biden administration,…
Read More‘And make America again!’
~a column by Colleen O’Brien My good friend Chris sent me a gift that is nearly a century old, a copy of a poem I read many years ago but forgot. It was written by Langston Hughes, published in 1936 in New York during the Harlem Renaissance. Because it is in the Public Domain, it is history; it is also…
Read MoreView from my window: Balance
March 15, 2026 When I see my primary care practitioner for my Medicare annual physical, one of the preliminary questions is “Have you fallen this past year?” So far, I have been fortunate to say I have not, but I continue, “I am very careful.” In living with cohorts of my gender and age, it seems many of us have…
Read MoreOur government is alphabet soup
Below is a list of governmental branches within our republic – administrations, agencies, departments, bureaus, commissions : Executive Branch, Judicial Branch, Legislative Branch; Departments of Justice (DOJ), Defense (DOD), Agriculture (USDA), Commerce (DOC), Education (ED), Energy (DOE) Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Labor (DOL), State (DOS), Transportation (DOT), Interior (DOI); Affairs: Veterans Affairs…
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