Jeff Cook
Embrace the prosaic, the ordinary, the familiar, the mundane. Never take the little things in life for granted.
I thought of these caveats as I plodded through town for just the third time since last October. That’s when I had my tendon re-attached. The healing process continues but I have started jogging again. Initially, I ran eight times around the rugby pitch. After a week, it seemed boring. I resumed my old daily course and was pounding the pavement once more.
Tuesday was a beautiful spring afternoon. As I neared the old bank building, I spotted two gentlemen enjoying the park benches along the route. I had seen these square denizens many times in my daily meanderings. They smiled and waved at me, as though they were happy to see me. It had been a while.
“Looking good,” one of them yelled.
Exultant, I replied, “I’m back,” as I raised my fist in triumph, like Rocky scaling the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Well, not exactly.
If it’s possible, I’m even slower now. So, there’s more time to observe, and cherish. It was all music to my eyes.
Deb Hahn
Last Saturday was opening day for the Franklin Township Youth League. As I drove past the school where the ballfields are located, a wave of nostalgia swept over me. There wasn’t an empty parking spot anywhere. It was a packed park. I had stopped at a friend’s house close to the school and could hear the cheering and shouting coming from the fields. Gosh I miss those days!
I wondered if the snack shack still carried the same menu it did years ago. The number one selling item was their walking tacos. Snack shack workers were lucky if they didn’t run out of taco meat before the game was over. Those things were banging!
The talent to play baseball runs deep in the Rebert family. My dad and his cousins played ball. The tradition continued with my kids, grandkids, niece, nephews and their kids. Summer time was packed with busy schedules, practices, attending home and away games.
On Saturday, I thought about how wet the fields must still be with all the rain we’ve had. And I cringed when I thought about all the muddy baseball pants I washed during those days. I always held my breath when the team announced what color their uniforms were going to be. Especially the baseball pants. One year, one of the kid’s team chose white pants. Now who chooses white pants for baseball? Apparently someone who wasn’t in charge of household laundry. Lol! Going to the games back then, as I’d watch one of my kids go sliding into base on a muddy field I would cringe. As soon as we got home, they knew to get those pants off asap for soaking so I could get them clean and presentable for the next game, which was usually the following day.
I have to share one memory that to this day brings on a smile. My youngest grandson had just signed up for t-ball. Five years old he was so excited to be playing. His first game, he got up to bat. Hit it on the first pitch, took off running. Made it to first base. We all cheered! Then the next batter came up and hit the ball and Cam took off. Except he didn’t head for second base, he headed straight across to third! Oh my gosh, we all started squealing, ‘Cam you’re going the wrong way!’ Needless to say he got tagged out. Poor kid. As time went on though he became a pretty good baseball player. Even went on to play with the High Heat traveling team.
So all you baseball mom & dads out there, good luck keeping the baseball pants clean this season. Seriously though, enjoy each and every moment. The kids grow so fast. Cherished memories you can hold in your heart for a lifetime.
p.s. Just wanted to report no luck in catching the ducks yet on the farm. I’ve been researching how to catch a Muscovy duck. When they warn how strong the males can be with their sharp foot claws, I’m starting to get a little nervous. I wonder if there are professional duck catchers out there for hire? Just kidding. Stay tuned.
Jim Hale
Context really is everything.
The other night, I was introduced to a friend of a friend, whom I didn’t think I knew.
But in reality, we had met several times when I wrote stories involving him.
Yet, somehow, I didn’t recognize him, and he didn’t recognize me.
Then, later in the evening, my obsolescent brain finally made the connection. I was as shocked as the dinosaurs when the asteroid hit.
I think he was too when I walked over and re-introduced myself, this time with the helpful information that we weren’t strangers.
If we had crossed paths again where our interviews took place, I’m sure we would have been old pals from the start.
My brain is like an old car that still gets me where I need to go, but there’s no way to trade it in.
Richard Franki
You can always question the federal government’s spending habits. It’s hard not to, really. Every now and again, though, somebody in that big, bloated, oblivious bureaucracy gets one right.
I’m talking about the U.S. Forest Service, which just bought three mining claim parcels totaling about 27 acres in Colorado.
That may not seem very smart, seeing as the forest service isn’t in the mining business, but that land has something on it that we can all share.
The federal government works for us, right? So, by extension, the forest service just bought us, and by us I mean you and me and 336 million other Americans, the world’s longest continuous dinosaur trackway for only $135,000.
The West Gold Hill Dinosaur Track site in Ouray County contains 134 consecutive dinosaur footprints that extend for nearly 318 feet, so we paid just over $1,000 a footprint, or about 0.00003 cents per American, give or take a zero or two.
Considering the tracks have been there for 150 million years, that’s a bargain at twice the price. As for ownership, I’ve done a little more math and I think it works out to 0.0000004% of a footprint each.
I encourage readers to do a little googling to see the photo, or you can find it on the forest service’s news and events page at https://www.fs.usda.gov/news/gmug/news-events. Seen from above, the trackway shows that the dinosaur did a little loop as it changed direction.
Maybe it wanted to get a look around but had a stiff neck and couldn’t turn it much. Pretty rough when your neck is 15 feet long.
That loop definitely has my attention. I’ve got my eye on one sort of UFO-shaped footprint in the lower right part of the loop at the top right of the picture, where the four-legged sauropod changed its mind for the last time before heading off to the left side of the photo. It’s kind of cute.
So fair warning, America. I’ve staked my claim and will be spending my next vacation on my 0.0000004% of that dino track. Actually, now that I think about it, between my wife and I we have 0.0000008%. And we like to party like it’s 149,999,999 b.c.
Vanessa Pellechio Sanders
As time goes on, it’s important to surround yourself around people you care about.
Life can take friends in different directions, but it is up to you to keep those connections strong. I probably sound like a Hallmark card.
One of my closest friends from high school and I lost touch when I was in college. We recently reconnected and had brunch last weekend.
My friend has not aged at all.
We went down memory lane, remembering our teachers and classes. He also did choir with my younger brother, Vinny, so it was nice to hear of some memories he had.
In our 10th grade English Language Arts class, I remembered studying so much for our weekly vocabulary tests, and he still always beat me on them. Yet, I became a writer somehow.
While it was clear time had passed, we caught up with much laughter and big smiles.
I choked on my water a few times too many from laughing so hard.
We are planning to get together again soon because it definitely was not enough time.
I wanted to share this in case someone else might be thinking of reconnecting with an old friend. I hope it gives you a sign to try it and see what happens.
I can’t guarantee it will be the same experience, but it felt so nice to go back in time and remember special moments from our childhood.
John Spangler
Paying attention to current affairs taught me a new term this week: checkbook journalism. Practiced by the National Enquirer among others, it underscores the technique called catch and kill, the act of buying stories that would damage the interests of a third party and making sure the stories never make it into print or any other platform. And its “cousin” is the strategy of paying writers to make up negative stories helping the third party client. A notorious example was the story accusing candidate Ted Cruz’s father of being involved with Lee Harvey Oswald, in a grainy, fabricated photo.
Checkbook journalism is the antithesis of good journalism. And this kind of fake news landscape threatens all the good work that goes on every day.
It causes a segment of readers to believe false sets of facts and make conclusions based on what is truly fake news. More exposure to fact checking causes some readers to check out, concluding that nothing in print is true or trustworthy.
The ecology of social media magnifies the effects and poisons the public knowledge and trust of news sources.
Checkbook journalism isn’t in itself, illegal. But it is a part of a significant trial that put it in service to alleged illegal activity that likely influenced an election. No information environment is pure and toxic and false threads are always operating somewhere. But I have to wonder how much poison our information environment can handle, before too large a segment of our citizenry can’t tell fact from fiction? A voting public with low information, or distorted information is a public danger to us when the elections are close. Putting the spotlight on checkbook journalism as a toxic source of news is an opportunity to educate our public about sources and which voices to trust.
Harry Hartman
It is amazing how stupid some people are and how stupid those people think the American people are.
For the past five of six weeks an amazing, almost impossible statistical anomaly has allegedly occurred. For those number of weeks first time claims for unemployment benefits have not fluctuated at all. For five of those weeks the number of first-time claimants has been exactly 212,000, (they are not even smart enough to change their fake numbers by a little bit) now that is either true stability or the numbers are a lie. The only week that the number varied, ironically it went up exactly 10,000 to 222,000. The fact that we have a large labor force of over 169 million makes the 212,000 number being provided by the U.S. Department of Labor obviously a clear fake number. Initial claims for unemployment insurance are all run through state programs…so let’s see 50 states with 50 different websites used to enroll, all with different qualification and reporting rules and outside influences such as holiday, the time of year, weather, etc., yes, I guess the numbers could be exactly the same week after week. I am also guessing that the same person could win the Powerball five out of six weeks with the types of odds the department of labor is throwing at us. (Do they think half of the country is dumb enough to believe these fake numbers).
Many economists and others who professionally follow these government released number are stating that the number being released are being made up and the “someone is cooking the books” to hide the true numbers from the business sector and the electorate to held Commandant Biden’s pooling numbers.
So now you have radical stooge bureaucrats not working for the American citizens, who by the way pay their salaries with their tax dollars, they are working for the democrat national committee to help Biden or whoever is pulling is strings to stay in power. With the way things are being done at the labor department, one has to wonder how bad the employment and unemployment numbers really are?
Others have also questioned the Biden administration’s penchant for playing with the economic numbers in other areas as well
Last month, for instance, it was noted that 11 out of 13 jobs reports were “revised down” by tens of thousands of jobs after the mainstream national media touted the initial more rosy numbers.
The other “breaking news” coming out of the Biden administration that no one is promoting or they are trying to keep a secret is that Biden and his cronies are using our tax dollars to train at least 200 activists to advocate for transgender rights in India as part of a program ostensibly designed to advance America’s “national interests”. President Joe Biden’s State Department plans to “train at least 200 LGBTQI+ community leaders … with preference given to trans and intersex community leaders” by “delivering specialized legal education and support” which will, in turn, empower “them to advocate for their rights and access the services they need.” Can anyone tell me how promoting transgender rights in a foreign country is helping our “national interests?
With all of this “work” Biden is putting in it is amazing he has the time to cancel billions of dollars of student college debt or give citizenship to millions of illegal aliens in a very clear way to try and buy votes, yet Trump is on trial, WOW.
Michael Cooper-White
Last week Time magazine issued its annual edition with the 100 most influential people in the world. The editors acknowledge that’s a highly subjective matter. No individual’s list would be the same as another’s.
As I reviewed the list, I was humbled to recognize fewer than 10 percent of those deemed by Time to be having the most impact in our world. I read several newspapers and magazines, along with television and internet news sources, and regard myself as a somewhat well-informed citizen. How is it I have missed tuning in to so many who are deemed the current and upcoming movers and shakers?
I hold Time and its writers and editors in high regard, so far be it from me to second guess their choices this year or any other. But is it really credible that the U.S. president does not appear on a list that includes the governors of our two most populous states, California and Texas?
Granted that Greg Abbot and Gavin Newsome are influential and polarizing figures, but neither has codes to the nation’s nuclear arsenal. The U.S. president is often referred to as “the most powerful person in the world,” but it appears Times has a standard of influence that doesn’t include avoiding the end of the world as we know it.
The map showing distribution of the 100 influencers is also interesting. The vast majority of names are of northern hemisphere inhabitants, perhaps perpetuating ignorance of the huge and growing global impact of South America and Africa.
Were we to compile an Adams County list of the 100 most influential citizens, no doubt there would also be many different lists. But two I’m fairly certain would appear on almost every list were the women I was privileged to write about as they enter retirement. Both Linda Thompson and Darlene Resh are highly esteemed by those they have served, as well as colleagues and public officials. Through their decades of work at the Adams County Office for Aging and 4-H, each has influenced the lives of hundreds and hundreds of individuals.
If you look around, it wouldn’t take long to grow that list of local folks whose dedication, commitment, and competence influence our lives every day. Thanks to them all!
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