With each passing day we get closer to election season. More and more candidates running for a seat on the Board of County Commission make their case to voters. I too, have been watching closely to the field of candidates and have been doing my research on each candidate. This task is not ha…
When the 1956 Major League Baseball season began, the New York Yankees were in the unfamiliar position of not being the defending world champion. The previous October the Brooklyn Dodgers dethroned the Yankees, and ended the Bronx Bombers’ unprecedented streak of five consecutive World Serie…
Would you wear a mask if you knew that 25% of our children under 2 years old would die if they got infected with the coronavirus? I suspect most of us would say yes without hesitation.
It’s high time Americans accept a first-world side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I don’t mean those blasted directional floor stickers I can’t navigate in the aisles at Walmart. No, I’m referring to male-pattern corona hair.
As regular readers of this column might remember, I recently visited the Emergency Room due to chest pain. While the tests they ran showed nothing amiss, the doctors felt at least one more test was necessary: a nuclear stress test.
Here’s one COVID-19 silver lining: The drive-in theater, a uniquely American creation, is doing booming business again.
I remember every graduation as if it happened yesterday, even though the most recent one took place on a very humid May day 33 years ago. The heat was so intense it shimmered visibly in the air, the mosquitos droned around us at DuPont Pavilion and the speaker, a venerable federal judge who …
One of my biggest pet peeves: people who can’t hold up their end of a conversation.
As the coronavirus continues to change our daily lives, more and more people are being forced to find new forms of income. People who were once retail employees or restaurant workers are having to look at the skills they have to offer and how those skills can be translated into a job that fi…
The question of how to reopen schools is going to be a tough question for many inside our school systems. Ever since late March, students have not been allowed to attend school in person and all learning has been moved online.
“Grandpa. Why did you make me legally obligated to pay off your $500,000 loan?”
As you know, Governor DeSantis announced last month that public schools in Florida would remain closed to students for the remainder of this school year with instruction continuing through distance learning due to the COVID-19 outbreak. While this has presented its challenges, distance learn…
So here in Highlands County we’ve slowly begun to open some things back up. Restaurants have offered limited seating (25% capacity) and for the first time in about six weeks I wore a skirt and attended worship services at Sebring Parkway Church of Christ.
Despite his 17-year career as a big-league player and coach, Major Harry Morgan “Hank” Gowdy is, to most baseball fans, a relative unknown. To military historians, however, Gowdy is famous for being the first player to enlist in World War I. Amazingly, by 1943, a 54-year-old Gowdy also serve…
Thank you, Class of 2020! It’s an honor to be delivering your college commencement address, even with this awkward Zoom connection. Testing…
This column is about Donald Trump and his performance as President of the United States. It is, in no way, based on either fake news or political diatribe.
I have been trying to do my civic duty. I stay more than 6 feet away from most people. I live alone, so my trips to the store are surgical strikes. I have social distanced from vulnerable friends and relatives, mastered the art of Zoom and Facetime, and learned to make my own damn coffee.
WASHINGTON — Thanks to a tendency to project our own values onto other countries, many Americans mistakenly assumed that China would become more like us as it embraced a free market.
With Mother’s Day happening this past Sunday, many of us may find ourselves looking back on our childhoods, a time when our mothers may have been our most crucial means of survival. After all, who else was going to cut the crust off your sandwiches and drive you to band practice?
For those who live in the Downtown Sebring area, you may have noticed a national store chain is nearing completion on a new location. The newest location can be found driving down the Sebring Parkway, just before reaching the roundabout, and is signaled by a bright yellow sign with black tex…
The flies were swarming. On the outside of the screens. Stuck in the screens. Some even squeezed through holes in the screens and now were dive bombing us in the house. In the summer, Tidewater, Virginia is ground zero for the mosquito and fly invasion.
“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself, and once for her child.” Famed actress Sophia Loren made that simple yet profound reflection, which all mothers know to be true. Mothering is about balancing the dual ro…
COVID-19 notwithstanding, it appears we are about to be set free once again. Of course, this will come in small opportunities we best not squander, or we may be placed on restriction once more. While I would like to cheer and motor over to whatever beach will allow me a day of sun six feet f…
In response to an April 21 “Your View” comments titled “Country needs leadership”: My, my, my, how ripe hate is in parts of our great country. Before I go further, I would like to quote a phrase, in part, printed in this newspaper and written by Kevin Patterson. “Republicans blame Democrats;…
Over breakfast the other day, my wife, who happens to be a physician, asked, “Whatever happened to compromise?”
It’s been a few years since I owned a handheld gaming device. Admittedly, I last “gamed” on my Nintendo DS probably 10 or more years ago. But, after hearing about a specific new game being released only on the Nintendo Switch, I decided to get back into the game of handheld gaming devices.
In the midst of this craziness, Friday was a special day that was overlooked by most Highlands County residents. Friday, May 1, was College Decision Day for our county’s class of 2020.
Anyone could easily go off the deep end trying to keep up with what you are supposed to do to keep safe. I’ll give you an example.
Imagine your neighbor knocks on your front door. “Can you spare a dime? It will help save the life of one person. If we all chip in, it won’t cost much.”
One of the issues that has cropped up in the past few weeks is time on our hands. Suddenly our schedules have been cleared out because so much has closed and we’re at home more. What do we do?
The soft glow of the afternoon sunset was giving way to the early evening. I was sitting alone on the porch of a house owned by the University of New Hampshire in Colebrook near the Canadian border. I was working for a 4-H camp and since the summer camp duties I had been hired for were not p…
Many of us are overdosing on YouTube during coronavirus confinement, and we’re used to the fact that, like it our not, we’re being monitored. Things we shop for online invariably pop up in ads accompanying the videos.
I received a nice note the other day from Marlene Smith in Lake Placid. She had been going through some old newspapers and reminiscing some, kind of like what a lot of us have been doing in the past several weeks.
When the COVID-19 virus first began rearing its ugly head it was both a terror and a mystery. Many statements were made concerning the virus. Oftentimes these statements would seem to contradict each other. It was and is a time of great confusion and frustration.
My boyfriend and I have been laid off from work for nearly two months. This means we’ve been able to spend lots of time together. Most days we’re together the whole day actually. Until recently that is. About a week ago my boyfriend received a call, asking him to come back to work.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the Multi-use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance (M-CORES) program — about how it’s not needed — and I want to speak up and bring some rural perspective to the discussion.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of indoctrinate reads “to imbue with a usually partisan or sectarian opinion, point of view, or principle.” After writing a column piece last Monday in which I was critical of the president’s decisions during this pandemic, I was de…
Due to the COVID-19 situation, I have been making an effort to be a little kinder and a little more open-minded. I have tried to be more courteous when I see others at the grocery store or in a parking lot. I stopped writing about politics because I wanted to focus on the mutual enemy of Dem…
PAWLEYS ISLAND, S.C. — As spring smothers us in shutdown-clear skies of azure, I've wondered how anything could be wrong in the world. How could a deadly disease, its origins traceable to a hideous, winged beast, survive among the sun-splashed and bird-heralded passage of rebirth and abundance?
Sixty years is a long time for love to last. My parents married on Easter weekend in April 1954 and remained married until my dad passed away almost exactly 63 years later. My in-laws married in September 1952 and remained married until my favorite father-in-law passed away just over 65 year…
I was going to try to make this a COVID-19 free column this week. Talk about something else for a change. We’re all pretty tired of the topic by now, I suspect.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
Caring for an elderly animal is very different from caring for younger animals, as I learned this weekend. This might seem obvious, but when my dad dropped off his 16-year-old dog for the weekend, I wasn’t anticipating that there would be so many differences between Wolfie and my own dogs.
This pandemic has struck our nation with a massive surge of fear. It is not the first time the nation has experienced this, as many can recall the aftermath of the attack on Sept. 11, 2001. The damage inflicted on the citizens of New York City and the United States did not just last on that …
My personal and professional opinion is COVID-19 is being handled wrong.
His head turned slowly. His eyes fixed intently on mine. Gently he asked, “Which way would you prefer to criticize us?”
We are seeing hopeful signs that the efforts by Americans to follow President Trump’s guidelines to slow the spread of this terrible COVID 19 virus that originated in Wuhan, China, are indeed working. We are sad for every life that has been lost, but at the same time we are thankful that Ame…
Is it me, or have people become a bit testier during this enforced quarantine?
