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They are calling to you

Local Columns

Have you noticed them calling to you? It is such an enriching time of the year. There's new growth all around us. In the last week, plants are finding the courage to pop above ground. Soon the fields around us will be planted and we'll be surrounded by growing greenness. The trees are absolutely bursting with new growth, and to go back to that initial question, have you noticed them calling to you? What are those referenced callers? The flocks of songbirds that have returned to provide us with their melodious songs. As I hike along various paths, I look for them in the budding trees ...

Go lightly

Local Columns

The wonderful thing about the outdoors — and one that it took me a couple decades to learn — is that it can be taken as seriously or as light-heartedly as one wants to. You can spend 60 days in a treestand, watching the deer, checking trail camera photos, and tracking the movement of that ...

Alcohol and the teen brain

Community Voices

The importance of the brain cannot be overstated. Without it, we would just be lumps of flesh. Damage it, and we malfunction. It determines everything we do, keeps us alive by monitoring and running our body, stores our memories, triggers our emotions, allows us to speak, determines how smart we are, and so much more. This critical organ needs to be protected and never abused in any way. A common way that our brains get abused is through the use of alcohol and street drugs. The focus here is on alcohol and the developing teenage brain. The fragile developing brain goes through ...

Solve our problems by following the Constitution

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: It’s truly sad to see how far from our Constitutional principles we have fallen as the self proclaimed “progressives” continue with their chants of this is what democracy looks like. Our Founders wrote a Constitution creating a republican form of government giving the people the power to govern themselves. How are we doing with that? Do you feel like you have any power over your own lives or are you abiding by rules and regulations thrust upon you by a unfriendly, tyrannical overlord? I fear it’s the latter. There was a time, not so long ago, when we would ...

20 mph plenty on city streets

Letters to the Editor

To the editor: It is pathetic that our community has had another car-hitting-student-pedestrian-accident. Marshall needs to focus on creating safer ways for non-vehicled citizens to get around. Twenty (mph) is plenty and it’s long overdue for the city of Marshall to enact and enforce a 20 mph speed limit on all city streets. Lower travel speeds should be the norm rather than the exception. Lower travel speeds are safer and allow for better observation and reaction time for drivers. We’re doing something wrong when streets posted 30 (mph) have most cars traveling far ...

Working on the waterworks

Community Voices

The word “plumbing” comes from “plumbum,” the Latin word for lead. That’s a load of hooey. “Plumbum” clearly denotes someone who has a bum crack that is precisely vertical. If you’re the type of person who enjoys perpetual torment, then repairing the plumbing in an old farmhouse is a gift that keeps on giving. After my brother Les and his son Dustin installed new sewer lines in our family’s ancestral farmhouse, I thought that everything was both hunky and dory. Wrong-o, moose face! The house’s plumbing seemed to work as intended. Nothing leaked, including ...