Saddened. Embarrassed. Determined. These three words evoke distinct feelings and emotions. In the context of an opinion piece we ran in the paper four and a half years ago, they described the aftermath of a community that lost its newspaper. After 130 years in...
Largest wildfire in state history still raging
A wildfire in the Texas Panhandle has consumed more than 1 million acres and as of Sunday was just 15% contained, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service. It is the largest wildfire in Texas history. The Smokehouse Creek Fire is by far the most extensive of...
Woman said her school would let her daughter ‘choose to be a girl, a boy, neither or both’
WASHINGTON DC, Feb 23 -- January Littlejohn is a stay-at-home mom and a licensed mental health counselor. In 2020, as Covid swept the nation, her 13-year-old daughter told her that “she no longer felt like a girl.” Her mom described it as a “devastating revelation” in...
Pet ownership: A lifetime commitment
He was crossing the road. Over and over. I was surprised someone hadn’t hit him with their car. I was also surprised the coyotes hadn’t gotten him. It was 9 o’clock at night and according to the residents of the small strip of country road, he’d been out there for a...
A range of options
My great grandparents lived on a homestead. They cooked on a wood stove. Most of us today have no idea how good we’ve got it. For my great grandparents’ generation, remodeling the kitchen meant picking a different place to stack the wood. When I was growing up in...
A word from our sponsors
Commercials used to be great. They used to be an art form. They used to be fun. Today’s advertising is boring in comparison. Television commercials were something to which I looked forward when I was a kid. Some were better developed and more interesting than the...
The Walking Dad
It’s obvious that I have to wait to die until after everyone else in my home goes. Otherwise, every light in the house will be left on for all of eternity. My dad used to say that I could leave on all of the lights whenever I started paying the bills. That time has...
Small town living: some leave, some come back
Small town Ashdown, Arkansas. John Moore You learn things when you grow up in a small town. Things you don’t learn if you grow up anywhere else. Things that are special. I was born in a small town. But I didn’t stay. I left for the same reasons other folks leave their...
There’s ‘snow’ ice cream quite like it!
It didn’t snow much in Ashdown, Arkansas in the 1960s. It doesn’t snow there much now. But when it did, and when it does, kids there know exactly what to do. Beg their moms to make snow ice cream. It was my mother who showed my sister and me that you could make ice...