This past year as Sheriff has been challenging, eye opening, and rewarding. Overall, I truly love being Sheriff. A portion of the year was spent preparing for and handling a full murder trial, while also preparing for a second. What many people do not see is how much work happens long before ...
Let’s get one thing straight: words and phrases don’t always make sense. Some of them are outdated, some of them feel completely made up, and some of them exist solely to make you feel like you missed a day of school that everyone else attended. Am I sometimes willfully ignorant of the ...
Being mindful of good health and food preparation during this season’s great flu exchange, I thought it might be good to “review” kitchen health standards since I do all the cooking now. (Actually, I was viewing this info for the first time.) I discovered that 1 out of every 6 Americans ...
2025 was arduous and is good to have behind us. The fever might have broken. Trump was raving mad on TV last week, almost spitting into the camera. This just days after saying that he doesn’t want Somalis living here because they are garbage. It was astonishing to hear even this president ...
Another year with the Tama-Toledo News Chronicle has passed us by, faster than anyone may want to admit. With the New Year fast approaching, I want to take this opportunity to give a rundown of my year. Ups and downs, leaps and bounds, late nights and early mornings — everything was on the ...
Well, this is my last column of the year, and believe me when I tell you, I am not going to forget 2025 anytime soon. Chances are, I will at some point, Alzheimer's and insanity run in the family, but until then, it shall be stuck in my head. This year has been complicated, crushing, exciting, ...
The other day I was a-thinking. Yea, I do think every now and then but not too darn much so as to get a headache. But I was thinking, (money being no object), what would I give all of you for Christmas if I could. New cars for everyone came to mind; huge raises for all; the Christmas ...
I have been rattling my brain tonight to try and think up some of my family's Christmas traditions to talk about. I didn’t come up with much. There are two reasons for this. One: it seems like every Christmas changes in some way, and two: our traditions aren’t the norm. First off is the ...
Over the last couple of weeks, I think I’ve been pretty candid about the up-and-down nature of my life – what’s been weighing on me, what’s been interesting to me, and my general musings. All pretty typical for this column. But if I’m being honest, it’s felt a little less than ...
One of the issues the Iowa House Republicans have been working on for several years now is the issue of school and public libraries providing material, mostly books, that rational people would consider pornographic. In past years we have passed legislation barring our public schools from ...