Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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As the new school year gets underway, we see a renewed focus on agriculture education and local food. Next to many schools, greenhouses are a common sight. With these come educational curriculum on planting, growing and harvesting, along with nutrition and health. Greenhouses are not new to rural agriculture education, however, they may not include food production. For instance, schools may devote greenhouse space to flower production for school fundraisers and, while this offers financial...
Random thoughts ... a.k.a. I am multi-tasking and a million ideas are racing through my mind. I’ll number them to give this column some semblance of order. 1. Best quote I have read in a long time. “Left, right or center - facts have no party line.” Spot. On. Many times at our house, Scott and I get into heated political discussions. He tells me I am not paying attention to what is happening (uh no, I pay attention all day long). Then I explain he fails to fact check before sharing some talki...
In rural America, we understand the importance of postal mail to connecting our republic. Sites across Nebraska’s Third District on the Pony Express Historic Trail commemorate the value of this service back to our earliest days as a territory and state. However, the United States Postal Service has been in the news more than usual lately for two reasons – its financial troubles and the increase in mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our founders recognized the importance of postal mai...
The wind energy industry remains one of the fastest growing in the U.S. It has not only increased capacity but provided consumers and utilities with clean energy while creating additional economic benefits, such as tax revenue, career opportunities and direct payments to landowners who host turbines. However, with that growth has come questions and concerns, leaving local officials trying to decide the best approach to regulating development. The most common solution is zoning, in particular...
Sometimes, intuition and curiosity take you down a rabbit hole. Last week, in this column, I wrote about my maternal great-great-grandmother and mentioned I didn’t know much about my paternal great-grandparents. First, though, a little backstory. I know my grandmother’s parents - Henry and Mary - owned the movie theater in Wausa. Great-grandpa was quite an entrepreneur. He built a miniature golf course there in the early 1900s, farmed and raised hogs at the family farm about two miles out of...
Facing a fierce public outcry, the U.S. Postal Service is “suspending” its sudden cost-cutting moves — tossing out high-speed sorting machines, uprooting collection boxes, reducing Post Office hours and eliminating carrier overtime — that have slowed mail delivery and threatened the on-time delivery of mail-in ballots for the presidential election. That’s all to the good, but it’s important to understand that the changes to USPS that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and the current administration...
The ability to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions is the definition of the adjective resilient. Since March, resiliency has been shown on many levels, at many ages and in many different situations. Whether being released from a job, experiencing financial struggles, sent home from school, forced to homeschool, battling an illness or standing by someone’s side as they fight an illness, nothing has been easy. Since March, life as we know it has been turned upside down, s...
The siren song of the big city is quiet in greater Nebraska. Youth today overwhelmingly prefer the connections and comforts of smaller communities to the grind of major metropolises, according to Nebraska Community Foundation’s recent survey of over 1,300 high school students. In January 2020, NCF began working with the University of Nebraska-Omaha’s Center for Public Affairs Research to co-create the Nebraska Youth Survey, with the purpose of examining young people’s perceptions and persp...
Small businesses continue to feel the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. While they are doing their best to keep the doors open, they are hurting. That is especially true in our rural towns. Congress has acted to provide businesses with loans through the Small Business Administration six months of payment forgiveness. This is a lifeline for big city enterprises, but it doesn’t help rural entrepreneurs. That is because many rural businesses do not have access to an SBA lender and must borrow f...
On the 100th anniversary of women earning the right to vote, I’ve been thinking about the long line of strong women in my family. I never had the opportunity to meet my paternal great-grandmothers. Great-grandma Larson died giving birth and Great-grandma Gropper died six years before I entered the world. I am a strong woman because a strong woman - Barbara Fields Larson - raised me. I imagine her strength came from role models - strong Oakdale women - she grew up watching: her mother, Neola; g...
The landscape is changing outside my kitchen window. The greens have started to take on a different tone. Many flowers are reaching maturity. In the vegetable garden, red tomatoes fill the line of tomato plants and potato plants are drying down. It's only August and I'm not ready to give up summer. Nor am I ready to write out Welcome Fall on chalkboards or wood door swags. Summer, please hang on. I welcome the cool evenings and mornings, but just maybe they were a bit premature. I've looked...
Steph Allen has already weathered one unimaginable crisis, the nightmare scenario that struck Grand Island and her new Teaching Tree childcare center this spring. She had to close the Teaching Tree for eight weeks as the COVID pandemic hit Hall County earlier and harder than almost any other spot in Nebraska. When she reopened in June, her enrollment and revenue plunged by 40%. It’s only now that enrollment is back up and daily operations are starting to feel somewhat normal. The good news is that both Steph and her high-quality child care c...
In many communities across rural America, we are beginning to ease into new norms and routines of quarantine. Each of us is attending to the impacts of COVID-19 on our friends, families and communities as we all reflect on these unprecedented times. Similarly, yet distinct, tribal communities and indigenous people have been presented with unique challenges across America that many of us may not be familiar with. By taking a closer look at how food sovereignty rebuilds disconnected nutrition...
When Scott and I were newlyweds, I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, concocting recipes, using him as a guinea pig for my culinary creations. Most mornings, he’d swing the tractor into the driveway and stop for breakfast around 8:30. Usually, I’d dish up eggs over easy on perfectly toasted wheat bread, or if I felt ambitious, pancakes from scratch, topped with sweet butter and homemade strawberry syrup. Stuffed, he’d head out to feed cattle and I’d clean up and start lunch prep. Some days, t...
In the past five months, Congress has responded to the coronavirus public health crisis with several emergency relief measures, including the stimulus checks sent to individuals and households, payroll protections to small businesses, expanded unemployment payments, fee waivers for borrowing against 401(K) plans and more. Now, Congress will get the opportunity to pass a relief measure that protects your access to trustworthy local news, helps grow local businesses through ads placed in local...
One of the great benefits of living in a rural community is our ability to enjoy food grown locally. Families appreciate easy access to high quality nutrition. Many farms and ranches depend on these local sales. Like so much of our daily life, this system was disrupted by COVID-19. When work is interrupted at industrial processing facilities, commodity producers flood local meat lockers with their product. With already limited reservation space being taken up by large growers, those who depend...
Emotions ran high again this week, as legislators tried to complete their priorities during the last few days of this legislative session. As I had hoped, the Revenue Committee advanced a package that joined property tax relief, business tax incentives and a major project at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. This proposal was contained in a compromise amendment to LB 1107, a placeholder bill introduced by the Speaker of the Legislature, Sen. Jim Scheer of Norfolk. The current Property T...
Who is your favorite sitcom dad? Think about it before committing to a final answer. Several come to mind - strong role models who believe in family, the hate-to-love protagonist who struggles with inner demons but has a heart of gold, the love-to-hate man who protects family at all costs. What I discovered, after reading the article titled, “Why are sitcom dads still so inept?” is this: I must watch a lot of older TV shows. Or, at least, I gravitate toward characters who exhibit the afo...
KAYLA BERGMAN Policy associate Center for Rural Affairs A bipartisan committee in the U.S. House of Representatives recently released a comprehensive plan outlining the policy steps needed to address climate change. The report, “Solving the Climate Crisis: The Congressional Action Plan for a Clean Energy Economy and a Healthy, Resilient, and Just America,” lays out detailed, actionable climate solutions legislation that the committee believes Congress should enact. Rural America has seen the effects of climate change, with increased extreme wea...
The last two weeks in the Legislature have seen a flurry of activity, as senators worked hard to get a great number of bills passed in a short number of days. There were some heated debates on the floor and emotions ran very hot for a few days, with contentious issues turning into some personal squabbles between senators on either side of those issues. With so much to accomplish in such a short time, perhaps this should be expected, but I am always hopeful that cooler heads will prevail and we...
The Legislature passed the budget bills this past week, containing their recommendations for adjustments to the biennial budget that was passed last year. Now it will be up to the governor whether he signs the legislation or uses his line-item veto authority. Earlier in the week, senators gave second-round approval to the budget bills after a lengthy debate. An amendment to LB 1008 was offered by Omaha Senator Machaela Cavanaugh to direct how the remaining funding from the federal Coronavirus...
It’s either black or white. No gray area exists. A former student - we’ll call him B - once told me the above-mentioned statement. From his perspective, things either happened a particular way or they didn’t. No mishmash of emotion was involved. Things simply were or weren’t. B spent a lot of time in my classroom. He was enrolled in two courses I taught, and for one period a day, he worked as a student aide. And then there were the other hours of the day, the times when fellow educators sent him...
ERIN SCHOENBERG Project associate Center for Rural Affairs Are you a part of your local farmers market, as a customer, vendor, manager, cheerleader or funder? Markets carry great tradition and whatever your current or future role is, here are some tips and experiences from managers and staff, for National Farmers Market Week, Aug. 2 to 8. 1. Markets need to be dependable and well-advertised—day of week, time of market and location should be established, well-known and consistent. 2. A core group of vendors is important; customers want to k...
State senators resumed the legislative session July 20, after breaking for almost four months due to coronavirus. We are set to complete this 60-day session Aug. 13. During this first week back, we immediately began debating the major issues left pending. Senators voted 30-8 to pull LB 814 from the Judiciary Committee and place it on General File so it can be debated. LB 814 would prohibit live dismemberment abortion and provide for criminal penalties for physicians who perform such abortions....
How many lifequakes have you experienced? After listening to Bruce Feiler on a podcast, and watching a segment with him on the Today show, I have to answer, “Quite a few.” A lifequake is exactly what it sounds like: a crisis situation that shakes and rattles your life, causing a disruption. Many times, the lifequake leads to a transition point in one’s life. Feiler experienced three crises in his 40s. He was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer, experienced financial trouble during the reces...
