Opinion
TroutMom Says: No value lessened
One of my favorite stories to tell is when Kyle Troutman, now my husband, did not want to hire me but begrudgingly did — then he proposed to me one year later. That is the short version, but it always gets a look or a chuckle.
Kyle Troutman: Feeling frisson
On March 1, 2010, at 3:22 p.m., I used my iPhone to record a song that to this day brings an intense frisson. Following a volunteer’s playing of “Amazing Grace” on bagpipes — in a light drizzle and with a backdrop of at least a dozen U.S.
Michelle Hilburn: What makes a library meaningful?
In Starfish by Lisa Fipps, one of my favorite young adult novels, Ellie, the main character, captures how meaningful a librarian’s presence can be: “[The librarian is] the first person to smile at me today./ The first to make me feel wanted./ Understood./I blink back tears./ It’s unknown how many students’ lives/librarians have saved/by welcoming loners at lunch.”
Dakoda Pettigrew: Ask Not
A bitter snowstorm dropped six inches of snow on America’s capital city the day before Inauguration Day. “Many of the pre-inaugural social affairs had to be canceled,” The New York Times wrote on Friday, January 20, 1961, adding that the snowfall had “snarled traffic, disrupted air and highway travel and chilled thousands of visiting Democrats.”
Kyle Troutman: The ball is in your court on Nov. 5
On Tuesday, I will cast my fifth-ever vote for a president in these great United States. To be quite frank, I’ll be glad to begrudgingly mark that oval and move on.
Dakoda Pettigrew: Democracy’s heart, the heart of Lincoln
“It is for us the living,” Abraham Lincoln said on Thursday, November 19, 1863, of the fallen soldiers at Gettysburg, “to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
Merlyn Johnson: What to know on education amendments
On the General Election ballot on Nov. 5, two amendments proposing to allocate funds to public education — Amendment 2 and Amendment 5 — will be presented to voters.
Jeff Fugitt: The spectrum of seasons
We read in Ecclesiastes 3:1, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” I love spring with all the excitement of new things. As temperatures rise, flowers bloom.
Kyle Troutman: Joy and despair
You can’t win ‘em all. That’s about all I could think to say on Tuesday morning after a wild weekend in Wildcat athletics.
Jeremiah Buntin: Halloween in the Ozarks
Just like most regions in the country, many folks in the Ozarks historically enjoyed celebrating Halloween. Celebrations were typically expressed in the form of either pranks or parties.
