Category: Opinion

~a column by Colleen O’Brien Last week I wrote with hope about our whites and our blacks inching toward rapprochement – cops shaking hands with protestors; protestors protecting one lone cop from other protestors bent on getting even – peaceful protestors with friendly protectors. This week, we see a group of whites on the roadside of a march route in…

Read More

~by Senator Jerry BehnJune 13, 2020 The Senate continued to debate a number of bills this week as we work towards adjournment for the year. One of the bills we passed would expand the Empower Rural Iowa program, and help increase access to broadband in areas of Iowa where it is still lacking.   Expanding access to broadband has become even…

Read More

~a column by Colleen O’Brien What it comes down to is this. Most of us, so often, do not do the right thing. Especially if we’re in power. When I look at history, or not even that far – how  about just to the head of the department I worked in? The teacher making fun of me in class because…

Read More

-by Senator Jerry Behn June 5, 2020 The legislative session re-started this week, continuing the work from a couple months ago and with a few new challenges ahead. This session looks much different than it did when we paused. Now, committee meetings are held in the Senate chamber instead of committee rooms to allow for social distancing, and speakers on…

Read More

To the editor, Donald Trump hides in a bunker, orders the teargassing of peaceful protesters, then poses with a Bible in front of a church. What sort of person would do this? Only a coward and a bully. What sort of a president calls state governors “jerks” and threatens his own citizens with military force?  Only a president who wants…

Read More

~a column by Colleen O’Brien When I was young, I couldn’t wait to vote. I had three compelling reasons: my father’s and both my grandfathers’ interest in politics; my senior-year civics teacher Frank Linduska; and John F. Kennedy’s name on the ballot for president. Because of the first two reasons, it was a given that I would vote. Even if…

Read More

~a column by Colleen O’Brien When I was in junior high – 1957-58 — the Asian flu, an avian influenza believed to have come from geese in China infecting humans, hopped across the world to, among many places, a little farm town in the center of the United States, a county seat called Jefferson in the rolling north central Iowa…

Read More

~a column by Colleen O’Brien Did you know that of all our national institutions, our postal service predates our country, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution? In 1775, at the first Continental Congress, Benjamin Franklin, because of his background working for the Crown delivering mail in the colonies, was appointed the first Postmaster General of the soon-to-be United States…

Read More

To the editor, On Monday of this week,  a debacle of large proportion was visited upon our community. Another pair of CAFO hog factories were approved by the Greene County board of supervisors for submittal to the DNR for the issuance of construction permits.

Read More

~by Janice Harbaugh The camera doesn’t lie. We’re all becoming aware of that in these strange days of pandemic when videoconferencing is becoming the way to meet. We’re getting good at reading people because we have time to study them without their actually being aware we’re doing it.

Read More

~a column by Colleen O’Brien It was the smell that awoke me, the smell in the dream. I was in the Post Office in Jefferson, where my dad worked. I was a little girl and I had come in through the wide swinging doors off the loading dock at the back where I’d been hanging out after school. The compelling…

Read More

The coronavirus pandemic that we face today will impact our lives in many ways, both in the near term and for years to come. A bright spot may be a change in how we look at the world and how agriculture fits into that world. News headlines from Iowa and the Midwest tell us some of those impacts and expose…

Read More