Laura Ebke

Breaking bread and drinking beer. That may be the ticket to working through some of the acrimony we see in the country (and state) these days. My husband is a family practice physician in Crete. His office has five physicians and five mid-level providers. There was some thought to having a “post-pandemic” party last summer, including providers and all other medical and support staff at the hospital. Then the pandemic didn’t end.

I saw a post on social media the other day that said: “If you want to feel old, subtract your current age from your birth year.” I didn’t want to feel old. Still, the year I landed in was during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, before Henry Ford started producing the Model T. Just out of curiosity, I did the math with some others in the family. My folks would have been in the early days of the Civil War, my oldest child’s span would have stretched back to Elvis Presley’s release of “Heartbreak Hotel,” and my youngest child would have seen Michael Jordan’s Rookie of the Year season.

The local hardware store. In Crete, it’s an Ace Hardware, run by Dan the Hardware Man and a group of employees who know where everything is. If you need it and Dan doesn’t have it, he’ll get it for you very quickly. That includes the ability to rent all sorts of tools that many people would only use once. That’s great local service, for sure.

Fall is in the air, as is political gamesmanship. Fortunately, there are no elections to look forward to in November this year, but for those paying attention, the Nebraska Legislature has been in special session, holding hearings and debating district lines following last year’s census. For those haven’t been watching, the big disputes have been over where to draw the lines for congressional and legislative districts.

The 2020 decennial census numbers are in, and The World-Herald has provided us with data to peruse online. I guess there are no big surprises, but maybe some things that we Nebraskans (especially those in rural Nebraska) need to keep in mind. Three counties in the state had double-digit growth...

The 4th of July is a favorite holiday for libertarians, no matter their political party affiliation. For many, it represents a time when people weren’t afraid to tell the world’s superpower to take a flying leap and leave them alone. From taxation without representation to the quartering of troops in...

I have friends who — a year ago — believed that masking recommendations, followed by mask mandates, were part of a plan to “permanently” make us wear masks. No matter how much I tried to convince them that this would be temporary, I couldn’t get through to them. On a recent weekend, I was proven right, and I think we’re learning something about ourselves and our fellow Nebraskans in all of this.

One look at the calendar, and the extended forecast, suggests that spring is here. That’s good news because the last year has been something of an extended winter, and it’s about time for us to see some new life. My son has been dutifully heading off to our church every...

Thomas Jefferson — author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States — believed that the republic should be built on an agrarian ideology. Of course, that didn’t mean that he thought everyone should be farmers — he knew that there would have to be merchants, some manufacturing and other services provided by non-farmers.