Opinion

Sept. 13, 2012Washington, Iowa To the Editor:Is anybody concerned about the power faction establishing itself in southeastern Iowa? The Orascom Group will soon start constructing a $1.4 billion agricultural chemical production center in the lovely valley just south from the quaint Lee County village of Wever. Orascom, the largest publicly traded corporation in Egypt, is being given roughly 85 percent of its ...

Talk to Washington head football coach Randy Schrader, and he?ll tell you that any football game comes down to five plays. Whoever makes those plays is going to get another notch in the win column.His Demons, 3-2 on the season, are exactly a handful of plays away from being a perfect 5-0 this year. In fact, five plays ? a bad snap, two costly penalties, a fumble and a bad call ? kept Washington from winning ...

?Darkness falls across the land. The midnight hour is close at hand. Creatures crawl in search of blood, to terrorize y?all?s neighborhood. And whomsoever shall be found without the soul for getting down, must stand and face the hounds of hell and rot inside a corpse?s shell.? For those of you who don?t know, that was part of the Vincent Price voiceover from the video of Michael Jackson?s 1983 music video ...

To the editor:I am a child of divorce: daughter of John D. Turner and Ruth M. Thomas. If you are a child of divorced parents, I urge you to seek out the non-custodial parent and replace bitter memories with forgiveness. John and Ruth leave behind one daughter, five grandchildren and thirteen great grandchildren. May my parents rest in peace. ? Donna Dingus, Missouri Valley

To the editor:March is National Professional Social Work Month which showcases the impact of over 642,000 professional social workers in the United States. ?Social workers weave together the threads of society?s social safety net,? says NASW Executive Director Elizabeth J. Clark, PhD, ACSW, MPH. ?As the profession of hope, we help people overcome poverty, inequality, insecurity, fear, violence, trauma, loss and ...

To the editor:As promised, we wanted to keep everyone updated about the wonderful results being obtained by your prayers and fasting to end abortion during the Spring 2012 campaign of 40 Days for Life!40 Days began on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, and will continue until Palm Sunday, April 1. We are at the mid-point of this campaign. There are 258 cities nationwide participating in this spring?s 40 Days and five ...

I don?t remember this happening, but Uncle Virgil loved to tell the story about how we were all wading in his creek (pronounced ?crick?), when I stepped into a hole and went under. I must?ve been around 4years old. He reached in with one of his giant paws, grabbed me by the scruff of the neck, and brought me up, ?sucking water like an old catfish,? he liked to bellow. He would then bend over, slap the leg of his ...

A few weeks ago I wrote about how I grew up as a very risk-averse boy. Well, earlier this month I met my polar opposites in risk aversion ? rodeo clowns.My family and I went to a rodeo in the town of Dayton on Sept. 2. Dayton is a small town of about 800 and located 15 miles south of Fort Dodge, but on this day it was anything but small. The streets swelled with cars and horses as the attendance at the rodeo ...

Over the past few weeks, I?ve taken an interest in a new vegetable sold at the farmers market: jalapeños. Don?t worry. I still eat a lot of tomatoes. But now I complement those tomatoes with something spicy.For nearly my entire life I assumed I was incapable of eating spicy peppers. I always had to buy mild salsa because even what they call ?medium? was too hot for me. Living for six months in Mexico didn?t seem ...

Laundry rooms are meant to have garbage cans.Holes in socks and underwear, frayed shirt collars and threadbare pants knees all mean the inevitable time has come.It?s never been that simple with me.I?m getting better at discarding holy socks and underwear. It?s always been easier to let go of worn dress shirts and pants. My favorite casual things are my downfall.Somewhere, I still have the threadbare, green ...

Today, a college football player may just as likely get a facemask full of soy turf as natural grass. In the past five years, industrial uses of U.S. soy have increased 50 percent. During that time, many major college and professional sports programs have adopted a soy-based artificial turf over labor-intensive grass or the petroleum-based turfs of yesteryear.This is, in essence, how a bio-based economy takes ...

To the editor:Like Supervisor Chairman Stephen Burgmeier [?Public hearings not just formality,? March 1] I value the public hearing process ? it?s the law. I also value preparation for meetings and communication. The road construction project that was being discussed at the joint meeting of the Fairfield City Council and Jefferson County Supervisors had been in development for many months. It involved a complicat...