Another excellent adventure (06/19/09)
A fellow I've known for a long time told me not long ago to stay away from writing about my trips and expeditions because people don't care about them. He thought I should only write about substantive topics that stimulate thought, discussion, and conversation. On the other hand, other people tell me they look forward to reading about my journeys, either for vicarious reasons or to see what foibles I experienced because something bad usually happens when I venture outside of McCook...

The political conundrum (06/12/09)
Effective this past June 1, I can't go to my favorite watering hole and smoke a cigarette anymore. I can't do that because the Unicameral passed a state-wide no smoking ban for any establishment open to the public; except for the cigar smokers who enjoy a special exemption for who knows why...

John Mullen Pro Am is more than just a golf tournament (06/05/09)
Once a year something magical happens at the Heritage Hills Golf Course in McCook. Bernie and Nona Mullen return to stage and participate in the Mullen Pro Am golf tournament, a tournament started 21 years ago by them in honor of their son John, a former assistant pro at Heritage Hills, who died of cancer in 1986. Monies generated from the tournament go to the American Cancer Society in its ongoing quest to find a cure...

The demons within us (05/29/09)
Jim Nantz, a CBS Sports announcer, mentioned on the air during a golf tournament a couple of weeks ago that he has a severe snake phobia; even to the point of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat thinking snakes are in his bed. John Madden, the former NFL coach of the Oakland Raiders and football announcer has retired from broadcasting Sunday Night Football on NBC because of his fear of flying. ...

Sometimes friends get it wrong (05/22/09)
There are five or six of us that hang out together on a regular basis. We golf together, socialize together, and discuss all things related to sports together. Sometimes we go outside the sports world for a discussion topic and that's what happened this past week...

The professor responds (05/15/09)
As I was looking over my class rosters for the upcoming spring semester last January, I noticed with a great deal of surprise and at least a little trepidation that Dick Trail and his wife Ann were enrolled in my Sociology of Love and Relationships class. ...

Education, income and job security (05/08/09)
As we approach the time of the year when Pomp and Circumstance will be playing on football fields and gymnasiums across America as we graduate another crop of young people, it's important for all of us to understand the role education plays in a person's life...

Golf season has officially started (05/01/09)
Golf season doesn't officially start for me until I play my first tournament and that was accomplished this past Sunday. Jim Lemon and I have partnered for the past several years at the Fireman's Scramble, a two-person golf scramble sponsored by the Cambridge Volunteer Fire Department and hosted by the Cross Creek Golf Links in Cambridge...

The culture war continues (04/24/09)
One of my favorite cable shows is Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel which airs on HBO every month or so. It's a penetrating, introspective look at how sports impact on people's lives; sometimes individually, sometimes collectively. A recent episode examined the culture war that continues in our nation's K through 12 educational system in regards to competition and the "no touching" policy that many schools are currently implementing...

What's happening to religion? (04/17/09)
The cover of the April 13, 2009, Newsweek magazine shouts in bright red words against a black background, "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." The article that addresses this statement is actually titled "The End of Christian America" and reports that the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points in the past two decades. ...

Stuck in a snowdrift (04/10/09)
I had business in North Platte last Saturday and drove up mid-morning. There were predictions of snow but the weather forecasters have been so dismal at getting snow predictions right this year, at least in this area, I didn't pay much attention to them...

After the love has gone (04/03/09)
"Tell me you'll love me for a million years; then if it don't work out, you can tell me goodbye." (The Casinos) The strong winds we've had in the area recently blew my satellite dish out of kilter and, consequently, I've been without television for the past two weeks waiting for DirecTV to come and reposition it. This has not been a good experience but I'll write about that at a later date. The outage, however, has given me the chance to watch some DVD's I haven't seen in a while...

The electric chair debate (03/27/09)
Wow! Let's bring the electric chair to McCook, the method of punishment finally ruled as "cruel and unusual" by the Nebraska State Supreme Court, the last state to abolish its use, on February 8, 2008. That means it was deemed as a cruel and unusual way to take a convicted felons life by all the states in the U.S. except Nebraska; the state that abolished it last...

The greatest compliment a man gan get (03/20/09)
I've had a lot of successes and a lot of failures in my life, as most of us have. It's the grand litany of life that makes it so. We have our peaks and our valleys and we can only hope that when this grand adventure draws to a close, we've somehow been fortunate enough to have had more ups than downs...

In favor of merit pay (03/13/09)
The President has come out in favor of merit pay for teachers, a concept I have long supported, although most teachers' unions do not. Consequently, as President of the McCook College Faculty Association, a branch of the Nebraska State Education Association which is a member of the National Education Association, I might find myself at odds with the policy of those two bodies...

The choices we make change our lives forever (03/06/09)
Sometimes when I get in a melancholy mood, I think back on my life and the myriad of choices I've made that has me where I am and I always wonder how totally different my life would have been if my choices had been different. I had the skills when I was young to be a professional baseball player, just like my dad was, but I got too interested in girls and, consequently, didn't work hard enough to perfect my craft...

The dream weaver (02/27/09)
One of the things the experts still haven't been able to figure out is the whole dream experience. Why do we dream and why do we dream what we dream about? It's not that there aren't any theories. In fact, there are as many theories about dreaming as there are about practically anything. But for all the books and articles written on dreams and dream interpretation, there's still more we don't know than we know...

My friend Jerry Porter (02/20/09)
I first met Jerry 12 years ago at the old Elks Club on a Sunday afternoon. I had missed the weekly Sunday morning services there and wasn't even for sure they would still be open when I got there. It turned out that they were so I walked in and took my regular seat at the far end of the bar by the door...

Dec. 21, 2012, The End of Days (02/13/09)
The History Channel did a week's worth of shows a couple of weeks back about Armageddon and the End Times so I DVR'd them in order to watch them back to back which I just finished doing. It's all some pretty incredible, far-out stuff and I wanted to comment on some of the conclusions drawn in the series...

A checklist for marriage (02/06/09)
We've spent a lot of time over the past four weeks in the Love and Relationships class I teach discussing and pondering the love choices we make and how we can know whether the people we choose really love us or not. I've never really been a big fan of "How To" lists, especially when it comes to interpersonal relationships because we're all different and it's highly unlikely that there is a "one size fits all" formula that works the same way for everyone, although there ARE certain things it's hard for a happy, successful marriage to do without.. ...

Against the Washington bailout (01/30/09)
The House passed the $819 billion stimulus bill Wednesday night in the hope of giving a shot in the arm to our comatose economy. The vote was 244-188. Eleven Democrats voted against the bill while no Republicans supported it. Even though pleas were made from both sides of the aisle for bipartisanship, little was to be found...

A new morning in America (01/23/09)
There have always been two distinct sides to my personality. One is the hard-charging, have-a-good-time, politically and socially interested, macho, sports-minded side and the other is the vulnerable, caring, emotional side when something really touches my heart. I've cried at the movies, cried watching television shows, and cried in front of the loves of my life. I had several of those emotional moments while watching Tuesday's Presidential Inauguration...

I'll tell you what I would have done (01/17/09)
The Love and Relationship class I'm teaching at the college got off to a good start this week with an enrollment of 20 which includes Kugler pilot, flight instructor and fellow Gazette columnist Dick Trail and his wife Ann. I look forward to the contributions a seasoned married couple can make to the class and the insights they will be able to provide our traditional students in the class who aren't yet married. ...

The sociology of love and relationships (01/10/09)
I saw a couple out and about last weekend that I haven't seen for awhile. They've been married for quite some time and he pretty much ignored her like he usually does. She had an affair a while back that most of their friends, including him, knew about but he didn't leave her or ask her to leave and she didn't leave him or ask him to leave. Even though this particular example involves a wife being unfaithful to her husband, it certainly works the other way around too...

People need people (01/03/09)
Barbara Streisand's hit song from the 1964 movie "Funny Girl," contains the words of today's column title and those words are just as relevant today as they've ever been. People really DO need people. For example, children deprived of human contact, called "feral" children in scientific lingo, grow up to have much shorter life spans, along with other mental and physical developmental disabilities, than do those exposed to human contact from birth...

The Ghost of Christmas Past (12/27/08)
Christmas was a wonderful holiday when I was growing up in Arkansas. Although I was raised in a religious home (Southern Baptist and Assembly of God), it was celebrated more in a secular way than a religious way; at least that's the way I remember it...

A different kind of bar (12/20/08)
Everyone has perspectives and opinions about bars in general and certain bars in particular, even though you may have never been there before. Sometimes the opinion isn't a favorable one. Those who don't frequent bars often believe they are dens of iniquity, filled with drunk people who talk too loud, talk too profane, and love to fight. On occasion that's true, but most of the time it's not...

When it's time to move on (12/13/08)
One of the great dilemmas we all face at some point in time in our lives is when to write -30- (newspaper parlance for the end) on something significant in our past and move on. When anything goes afoul in our lives; death, terminal illness, romantic break-up, job loss, etc., Elizabeth Kubler-Ross says we go through five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. ...

An inconvenient conclusion (12/06/08)
One of the greatest failings of my liberal friends has been to draw conclusions based on incomplete or inconclusive data and run with it because it fits their perspective of the world. In no situation is this more obvious and regrettable than the fierce debate over climate change and global warming...

Friends can't be bought, bartered or traded for (11/28/08)
Significant, life-changing events happen in all of our lives, regardless of status, wealth, skin color, heritage, ethnicity, religion, or anything else that tends to separate us rather than bring us together. No one completely escapes the slings and arrows that life throws at us because life is not always neat, orderly and predictable. ...

I love these kids (11/22/08)
Before I go further, I want to assure you that I don't use the term "kids" in a disparaging way. Some young people are insulted when they're called kids and that's not the intent here at all. To illustrate what I mean, there's a fellow that sometimes shows up at one of the local watering holes who's pushing 90 and, when he does, he instructs the bartender to "give these kids what they want." Kids in this case meaning anyone younger than him which everyone there is. ...

Do you ever get your feelings hurt? (11/15/08)
I'm asked that a lot because of this column. People sometimes tend to not be very nice when they criticize a column I've written and those people close to me, those people who care about me, often ask me how it makes me feel when I hear or read the biting, stinging, often personal criticisms of others...

Obama and Pelini (11/08/08)
I grew up in the segregated South. I lived in a segregated town, attended a segregated high school and the University of Arkansas when it too was segregated. The only black person I ever knew personally until I joined the Tulsa Police Department was the shoe-shine man at my home-town barber shop. People referred to him as one of the "good" n*****s."...

Las Vegas -- it's still there (10/31/08)
Norm (The McCook Chef) and I pulled out of McCook at 5 a.m. last Saturday, driving to Denver to catch a plane for our annual World Series trek to Las Vegas. This year, in addition to the World Series, college football and pro football, there was also The Breeder's Cup Horse Races being run, plus the ever-present and always open blackjack tables so we were pumped up about the weekend and anxious to get there...

Pain and pleasure (10/25/08)
A basic assumption of life is that people seek pleasure and try to avoid pain and, for the most part, this is true. A conundrum exists, however, in the way some people define these two experiences that appear to be at opposite ends of the spectrum. Because for some people, pain IS pleasure...

A right or a privilege? (10/18/08)
A prominent McCook businessman and a friend of mine asked me the other day if I intended to write a column before the November election on America's "ignorant electorate" and I told him it was already on the drawing board. It's something we talk about in class at the college every semester and an issue that simply won't go away. Because far too many Americans cast uninformed ballots at every election, should voting be a right or a privilege?...

Rednecks for Obama (10/11/08)
I read a fascinating article on Yahoo News yesterday. Two old dudes, Tony Vessman, 74, a retired Missouri state trooper, and Les Spencer, 60, got politically active last year when it occurred to them there must be other lower income, rural, beer-drinking, gun-loving, NASCAR race enthusiasts fed up with business as usual in Washington...

Presidential politics (10/04/08)
We're only a month out from the general election and, once again, the electoral map looks very similar to 2004 and 2008. In terms of population, the country is fairly evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, although the Dems have made numerical gains since the last election that might be enough to elect the Democratic candidate this time around...

On the other hand (09/26/08)
Last week I wrote about friendship. This week the subject is treachery; something all of us have been exposed to at times in our lives, some more than others. Rousseau and Locke, among others, wrote about the difference between living in respectful concert with others as opposed to living in the "state of nature" in which men are ultimately free to do as they please, which also includes doing to others as they please. ...

Friends forever (09/20/08)
We say "friends forever" a lot and we obviously mean it when we say it but sometimes things don't turn out the way we had hoped. Friendships are very similar to love relationships in this respect. We tell someone we'll love them forever and then we don't because things change, or they change or we change, or sometimes a combination of all three...

The sociology of love and relationships (09/13/08)
The title of today's column is also the name of a new course I'll be teaching this coming Spring semester at McCook Community College. This follows a natural progression and evolution of ideas and concepts that started when I was working on my PhD at Oklahoma State University. ...

Was it good for you? (09/06/08)
We usually reserve the question contained in the title of this week's column for a certain activity between two people but that's not the nature of the question today. Recent reports in the national news contain research that says we're living in the most narcissistic times since research began on the subject. ...

Maturity isn't chronological (08/30/08)

Live each day like there's not much time left (08/23/08)
There has been a spate of celebrity deaths, several at relatively young ages, in the past couple of months that serve to remind us that life is fragile, temporary and short. Death never takes into account your bank account, status, celebrity or where you're at in your journey through life. The most recent death of Gene Upshaw, President of the NFL players union is a prime example of that. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last Sunday and died four days later. He was only 63 years old...

Thinking about different things (08/16/08)
A couple of weeks ago I eagled the first hole at Heritage Hills from 115 yards out while playing with Jim Lemon, Ben Coburn, and Ole Olson. That just goes to prove that even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then. While flipping through my DirecTV channels this past Sunday, I was amazed to find two disgraced former big-time televangelists still doing their thing. ...

The truth shall set you free (08/09/08)
When witnesses testify in a court of law, they are required to take an oath swearing "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." Even then, it's not unusual for a witness to lie. It's not unusual, in large part, because we've become a nation of liars. I know that "liar" may sound a bit harsh, but when we don't tell the truth, we tell a lie. Some people call it "shading the truth" or "embellishing" or they call it a "little white lie" but a lie is still what it is...

Political correctness, sensitivity training, brainwashing (08/01/08)
A majority of Fortune 500 companies and many colleges and universities now employ sensitivity trainers to "educate" their workforce about the special problems and issues faced by any person or group who might be considered a minority or disadvantaged; in other words, anyone who isn't a physically healthy, emotionally mature, white male...

The joys of technology (07/26/08)
I bought a new iPod Nano last week. I feel safe in saying that a lot of people my age and most people older than me don't know what that is because it's on the cutting edge of technology and the older people get, the more set in their ways they become; hanging on to the old and either rejecting or ignoring the new...

Higher education at the crossroads (07/19/08)
I remember the first couple of weeks I spent in classrooms at the U in Fayetteville, Arkansas like it was yesterday. I came from a pretty small school in Arkansas (46 in my graduating class) and, not knowing any better, expected the same kind and quality of instruction I had received in high school. ...

Celebrating the Fourth (07/04/08)
The Fourth of July is one of the most festive holiday's we have. Many go to the lake or meet with friends or have their own cookouts in their back yards. I remember the Fourth vividly when I was a child growing up in Arkansas. My Uncle Bill and I would drive across the tracks to the ice house and get a big block of ice. We would take it back home where we would chip it into little pieces to put in the home-made ice-cream machine...

The Natural State (06/28/08)
A few years ago, Arkansas went from having "Land of Opportunity" printed on license plates to "The Natural State" and I thought it was a good choice. Whether it is a land of opportunity or not is certainly debatable but there's absolutely no debate over the natural beauty of the state...

Mike and Norm's excellent adventure (06/21/08)
Regular readers of my column know that I like to take trips and do things I haven't done before and they also know that my sojourns last summer left something to be desired. In fact, some of them turned out to be disasters. But I've always believed that just because something bad happens once or even more than once, it has no bearing at all on what will happen next. ...

Interpreting the Bill of Rights -- part three (06/14/08)
AMENDMENT VI "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."...

Interpreting the bill of rights (06/06/08)
Last week I began a discussion of the Bill of Rights in the context of judicial interpretation, how those interpretations often create "new" law, and that both liberal and conservative justices are guilty of doing it. Today I continue that discussion...

Interpreting the Bill of Rights (05/30/08)
A lot of people living in this country know that one of the most important things the President of the United States does, maybe THE most important thing, is to appoint justices to the United States Supreme Court. The reason is simple. Presidents may serve only two terms, whereas Supreme Court Justices serve for life. ...

Casualty assistance calls officer (05/24/08)
I was awakened early one morning a few years back by a knock on my door. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving and I had just returned home the previous day from Lincoln where I had spent Thanksgiving with two of my three sons and their mom. My third son, Brandon, was a Navy corpsman stationed in San Diego and he called us Thanksgiving afternoon. ...

The flawed concept of equality (05/17/08)
In The Declaration of Independence, signed on July 4, 1776, the second paragraph begins by stating, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal‚" -- 232 years later, we continue to struggle with a concept that was flawed on its face because all men are NOT created equal; they never have been, nor will they ever be...

What goes on behind the badge (05/10/08)
You've probably heard about the allegations of police brutality in Philadelphia after three suspected shooters were surrounded, thrown on the ground and kicked, punched, and night-sticked by several Philadelphia police officers this past Wednesday. The entire incident was captured on video tape by a news crew for a local television station and has been broadcast on most of the major news networks. It was the Rodney King incident all over again...

The end of another era (05/03/08)
I taught my last class of the semester today (Friday) and next Friday, many of my students who came to campus two years ago not really knowing what to expect will be walking across the stage at True Hall to receive their diplomas and move on to either a career or the second stage of the higher education process. ...

Playing the hand we're dealt (04/26/08)
If someone would have told me twenty five years ago that, at this stage in my life, I would be single, living alone in an apartment, and teaching at a community college in McCook, Nebraska, I would have, at the worst, went looking for a gun, and at best, considered myself an abject failure...

Using the pejorative (04/19/08)
I was sitting with several friends over cocktails the other day, talking about one of two topics you should never talk about when alcohol is involved and that was politics. The other, of course, is religion. There were five of us sitting at the bar. ...

An inconvenient truth (04/12/08)
The title of today's column is also the title of Al Gore's documentary about global warming that, in very large part, won him the Nobel Prize this past year. In today's political climate, most Democrats support the idea of global warming, most Republicans don't. Some aren't sure. I'm not sure either. And I don't think anyone should be sure enough to use the word "truth" in a title about the idea of global warming...

What's wrong with this picture? (04/06/08)
I imagine most of you either read the front page story in last Sunday's edition of the Omaha World-Herald or have heard about it by now. It was about how births to unwed teens feed generations of poverty. It particularly focused on two black women, Samona Jones and her daughter, Keyana. ...

Abiding by the rules (03/29/08)
At the beginning of this presidential campaign year, the Democratic National Committee issued specific warnings for states to not front-load their primaries, desiring to keep Iowa and New Hampshire as the first primary states. The DNC felt so strongly about this that they included sanctions with the warning. ...

Nattering nabobs of negativism (03/22/08)
The title of today's column is a phrase coined by William Safire and given to Vice-President Spiro Agnew during the Nixon Administration to describe the press; the idea being that the press always looks at the negative and never at the positive. We continue to hear those same criticisms today, thirty five years later. Only today, it not only applies to journalists but to politicians as well...

Making promises they can't keep (03/15/08)
Several years ago, before I moved to McCook, I was the Executive Director of a temporary shelter for abused and neglected children in Arkansas. These were children who had either been removed from their homes or had run away from home and they would be placed with our agency until foster parents could be found for them...

A continued erosion of rights and freedoms (03/08/08)
Sometimes it's possible for Democrats and Republicans to share political common ground and this is one of those times. I share common ground with fellow Gazette columnist Dick Trail and some of the sentiments he expressed last week in his Saturday column; in particular, the smoking ban passed by the Unicameral...

People aren't for hitting (02/29/08)
I became involved in the prevention and elimination of domestic abuse eight years ago and twice a year, usually in March, and always in October because it's national domestic abuse month, I write about this horrible tragedy that goes on behind closed doors and drawn shades and blinds all across America. ...

Falling out of love (02/23/08)
Falling out of love politically, not romantically, that is. Regular readers of this column and my book know that when it comes to affairs of the heart, I'm a hopeless romantic. I fell in love with a woman eight years ago and I'll be in love with her eight years from now, or 18 years from now or however long I still have breaths to take or dreams to dream. So the title of today's column is not about personal romance, it's about political romance...

Thinking about different things (02/09/08)
Saturday presents Nebraska's Democrats with an opportunity to do something we don't get to do very often and that's to be a player in selecting the Democratic nominee for president. I jokingly told my students the other day that I and the other three registered Democrats in Red Willow County were going to meet in one of the broom closets down at the courthouse for our caucus. ...

I'm not sure there is a place called Hope any more (02/02/08)
Both former President Bill Clinton and current Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee are from Hope, Ark. One of Clinton's campaign themes when he was running for president was "I still believe in a place called Hope." I'm not sure I do anymore. Hope means possibility. ...

Pundits, politicians and predictions (01/26/08)
Many of the readers of this column don't particularly like it when I write about politics. In fact, a good friend of mine was lamenting to me just the other day about how we're inundated with presidential politics eleven full months before the election and how we're going to continue to be twenty-four, seven until the election in November...

Leaving the nest -- The final semester for some (01/12/08)
This is a melancholy time for parents and their children across the land. Many will be graduating in five short months from high school and will be embarking on a life filled with new challenges and expectations. It's especially melancholy for the parents. ...

Presidential politics and bad relationships (01/05/08)
Hillary got it handed to her in the Iowa caucuses Thursday night and the political prognosticators and pontificators are busy trying to figure out why. She has been the acknowledged front runner since she declared her candidacy and has enjoyed double-digit leads over her competitors since then. ...

Do actions speak louder than words? (12/29/07)
We often speak in terms of the "breadth and depth" of things. When we do that, we're in essence wondering or asking whether our behaviors match our words and/or our declarations. For example, one of the subjects I teach in my Introductory to Sociology class is a chapter on religion and one of the things we discuss is the breadth and depth of religious belief...

My proudest moment (12/22/07)
Watching my son, Michael, graduate from college with his B.A. from Arkansas Tech University was the proudest moment of my life. I'm a sentimental old fool anyway and I just couldn't hold back the tears when they announced his name. He had jumped through all the hoops and over all the hurdles on the way to accomplishing his goal and I was so proud of him and for him. He's going to be a teacher, just like his mom and dad...

We all lead multiple lives (12/15/07)
Erving Goffman called it "front stage-back stage" behavior and it means many different things. Sometimes we say different things to different people. For example, we might tell someone we love them and tell others we don't. Sometimes we say the same things to different people. ...

Getting rid of the static in our lives (12/08/07)
Wayne Dyer is a former college professor who became sort of a self-styled, self-defined self-actualization guru about 20 years ago and he's still going strong. He can often be seen on PBS and has written many books about how to take charge of your life and live it to the fullest. ...

Once a family, always a family (12/01/07)
I'll be traveling to Arkansas on Friday, Dec. 14, to celebrate my son Michael's birthday which will actually occur this Monday, Dec. 3, his graduation from college on Dec. 15, my son Will's birthday on Dec. 18, and, of course, Christmas. On top of that, Linda and I were married on December 22nd so December has always been a busy month for us. ...

Not there yet in Huskerland (11/24/07)
Many Husker fans felt four years ago that the hiring of Bill Callahan was ill-advised. Nebraska found itself in a strange and unusual situation. They had gone 40 days since the firing of Frank Solich, the day after beating Colorado in Boulder and finishing 9-3 in the regular season, and a 58-19 record overall. ...

Birthing a book isn't easy (11/17/07)
I wrote a column almost two months ago announcing the launch party for Morris Media, a new book production firm in McCook. Gene Morris, former publisher of the McCook Gazette, is the president of the firm, Barbara Morris is the vice president of operations and Gloria Masoner is the design director...

Why do people lie? (11/10/07)
If there was only one answer to the title of today's column and someone could determine it, then the problem could be fixed and the discoverer of the answer would become a very wealthy person in the process. Unfortunately, there isn't just one answer. In fact, there are a multitude of answers and I want to address just a few of them here...

17,999 really nice people and one who wasn't (11/02/07)
I hadn't been to Las Vegas in a few years so I was really looking forward to the trip. Especially since I wouldn't be traveling by train. I had also never had the pleasure of attending a Jimmy Buffet concert and, although I'm not a Parrothead, I really enjoy unique spectacles, regardless of who or what it involves. ...

The choices we make (10/27/07)
I was 14 years old and had just gotten my driver's permit. I had been waiting on this day for a long time. Since my birthday that year fell on the weekend, I had to wait until Monday to take the test. I'm pretty sure I didn't sleep a wink the night before and it seemed like Monday went on forever until school was finally out and my grandfather drove me to the county seat to take the test. ...

School is for fools (10/20/07)
I didn’t have to think very long about this week’s column title. It had been written on the board by someone when I walked into my classroom earlier this week. Unfortunately, it is an attitude that is becoming more and more pervasive in our younger generation. And it’s a shame...

It's all in your head (10/13/07)
Medical research has recently proven that "falling in love" is a process that can be measured in the brain. The brains of people in love aren't the same as the brains of people who aren't. That's why it's so difficult to talk to other people about your own love connections. Unless they're in exactly the same relationship place that you're in, it's like two people trying to communicate and neither understands the language being used by the other...

The fragility of life (10/06/07)
Our college family lost one of our own Wednesday night, once again underscoring the temporary, fragile nature of life. Kasey Jo Warner was struck by a vehicle and killed while she was out for a walk with her 3-year-old daughter. The man driving the vehicle was arrested at the scene for vehicular homicide and driving under the influence...

The Morris Media launch party (09/29/07)
This past Thursday evening saw Gene Morris, the former publisher of the McCook Gazette, launch his new company, Morris Media, along with the other principals in his organization that include his wife Barbara, Vice-President of Operations, and Gloria Masoner, Design Director. The gala took place at the Bieroc Café in McCook to a full house of invited guests...

Deadbeat dads and selfish moms (09/22/07)
In an old movie called "Divorce American Style," Dick Van Dyke was telling a friend of his that, in his divorce, his wife got the car and he got the payments, his wife got the house and he got the payments, his wife got the children and he got the payments, and his wife got the gold mine and he got the shaft...

Who betrayed whom? (09/15/07)
I know a guy who several years ago got caught up in a relationship with a friends' girlfriend. He and the other guy weren't best friends but they liked each other and socialized a lot together. In fact, there was a whole cadre of people who went places together, had parties together and generally enjoyed each others' company. Everyone in the group was married except the friend of the guy I know. He was divorced. The guy I know was married but wasn't living with his wife...

Sometimes you wonder (09/07/07)
Life is an incredible journey filled with ups and downs, highs and lows, agony and ecstasy and we never know what's going to happen next. I do my best to explain this to my sociology students every time we meet and yet, sometimes, I don't have the answers either...

So what is all the fuss about (09/01/07)
I've always been a bit mystified about the strong emotions that gambling elicits from people. People's response to it varies widely. Some see nothing wrong with it at all and actively participate in gaming ventures. Some believe others should be able to gamble if they choose to, even though they don't do it themselves. And then there are those who believe that gambling is an evil and terrible thing to do and don't think anyone should be able to gamble on anything ever...

Big boys don't cry ... or do they? (08/25/07)
I think I was 6 or 7 years old the first time I heard the statement in the first part of this week's column title. I wanted to go somewhere or do something and my mom told me I couldn't and I started crying. And as soon as the crying started, my mom said it...

What do you want to be? (08/18/07)
Both of my boys start college again this coming week, as young people are doing all over the country. Michael will be student teaching this fall, the final hurdle he has to jump before receiving his degree in Education in January. He's going to be a secondary school social studies teacher. Will switched from an English major to Broadcast Journalism this past spring and has another year to go before he finishes...

Some things you may not have heard (08/10/07)
One of the many great things about living in this time of unprecedented discovery and exploration are the new things we learn about literally every single day because of the unprecedented twenty-four hours a day, every-day news coverage. The world has certainly grown smaller since I was little. ...

The politics of discontent (08/04/07)
A recent New York Times poll reveals that only 38 percent of the American people view the Republican Party favorably while 56 percent view it unfavorably with the remainder undecided, while 52 percent view the Democratic Party favorably, 41 percent unfavorably, and the remainder undecided. ...

The amazing Mr. Bush (07/28/07)
The president's poll numbers reached an all-time low a couple of months ago and have stayed there. His approval rating continues to hover around 30 percent and his disapproval rating is at 65 percent, tying the highest disapproval rating for a sitting president since public opinion polling first started. The 30 percent approval rating is obviously made up of Bush loyalists who are going to support him, right or wrong...

A lot of people 'mess around' (07/21/07)
Whenever we hear the phrase, "mess around" as in "did you know that John's "messing around" on Julie, we naturally think about infidelity. "Messing around" has long been the euphemism society uses for having an affair. And certainly it continues to apply. But there are lots more ways to "mess around" on your spouse than keeping company with another person...

A great weekend in Curtis (07/14/07)
I had the pleasure of playing in one of the best-run golf tournaments I've ever participated in at Arrowhead Meadows golf course in Curtis last weekend. Although it was oppressively hot with high temperatures soaring over 100 degrees both days, the hospitality and friendliness of the people involved made the heat a lot more bearable...