The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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“It wasn’t my fault the car in front of me hit me. I glanced at my text message for only a second when our bumpers collided.” “How could the car in front of you hit you?” “The idiot stopped to let a deer cross the street — and dented my front bumper with his rear bumper. Yet the cops wrote me up for texting while driving!” “It’s because of people like you that April has become National Distracted Driving Awareness Month! Safety advocates are urging drivers like you to avoid texting or watching...
I forgot what it was like to experience a good old common cold. Prior to covid, you see, the cold-getting experience went like this: I’d wake with a stuffy nose and scratchy throat and my only thought was to curse the gods for visiting a new virus cocktail on me that was going to make me cranky for nine days. I remember at first denying that a cold virus was feasting on me, then, as the hacking got bad, I moved on to the anger stage before finally accepting my fate that the miserable common cold...
Here’s a great New Year’s resolution: get a pet. As we wrap up a very inflationary 2023, pet shelters across the country are at maximum capacity and they don’t have room to house the pets people are turning in. ABC News reports that animals entering shelters began to climb in 2021. During the covid pandemic, you see, many people adopted pets, but as they began to go back to the workplace, some decided they no longer wanted to care for a pet, so they turned them back in. The past year was signi...
Here’s an unpleasant holiday statistic: Average Americans are giving significantly less to their favorite charities this year than they did just four or five years ago. Average Americans have long been among the most generous people on Earth. But this year, thanks to an economy disrupted by COVID, soaring interest rates and three years of high inflation, many are unable to give. Americans are hurting in their pocketbooks. This past year credit-card debt jumped faster than ever before in history,...
With every purchase you make — at coffee shops, fast food restaurants, chain stores and more – you are presented with a digital payment screen that asks you to leave a tip. On one hand you feel guilted into leaving a tip, because the person who just rang up your purchase is staring directly at you. On the other hand, you wonder how in the world did we get to a place in which workers in so many different roles – even plumbers and mechanics – are suddenly expecting extra money just for doing their...
Well, that didn’t take as long as expected. In case you missed it, our federal government is now estimated to pay more than $1 trillion a year to service just the interest on our national debt — about $200 billion more than we spend on our military or Medicare. Why are we suddenly paying so much? Because the cost to service our debt has doubled in the past 19 months as annual federal deficits balloon and high interest rates make borrowing more expensive. The origin of this “sudden” problem...
Hopefully, the rugged beard I’ve been sporting will motivate at least one of my fellow men to take better care of his health this November. Every November, you see, two charitable organizations, Movember and No-Shave November, raise funds by encouraging men to not cut or shave their facial hair. Both organizations have made November an enjoyable month for we men to share photos of our thickening mustaches, beards and other long hair. The idea is to get men thinking and talking about mental h...
When I read a news piece about the passing of longtime California senator Dianne Feinstein a few weeks ago, some of the comments left at the bottom of the online article made me sad. Feinstein suffered a very public health decline before she passed. Anyone with the slightest sense of empathy would think “there but for the grace of God go I” — as every one of us could suffer a similar decline before our time finally comes. Empathy is in short supply these days, however. I don’t recall the exact w...
President Biden is being dogged by a unique White House problem. About a week ago, Biden’s German Shepherd, Commander, bit a secret service officer — Commander’s 11th secret-service-officer biting since he moved to the White House in December of 2021. Commander must have been following the paw prints of Major, Biden’s previous German Shepherd, whose biting appetite included secret service agents, technicians and at least one National Park employee. At one point, Major bit an unlucky governm...
It was a family event for the ages. Last weekend, my family traveled to Gettysburg to attend my nephew’s wedding. I drove my mother down Friday so she could participate in the rehearsal. We had a wonderful drive talking about a variety of things, mostly stories about my father, who we lost last year. After the rehearsal, we attended a welcome party, where we had great fun catching up with my cousins and other family members. The room was filled with intense joy. Every person there was e...
Houses are getting smaller again — which is going to make many Americans happier. Americans faced with high mortgage rates and a shortage of affordable homes for sale are opting for new, smaller homes that do not have dining rooms, living rooms, spare bedrooms and even bathtubs, reports the Wall Street Journal. Builders are building smaller homes partly to give cost-constrained buyers a more affordable option. But it’s mostly because it’s the only way home builders can turn a reasonable profit,...
Declining attention spans have reached epidemic levels. That’s what Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning and Memory at St. Bonaventure University in New York, tells Time. That’s certainly the case with me. As I struggled to write the first three paragraphs of this column, I searched autotrader.com for a new car I don’t need or want; searched Facebook Marketplace for lakefront vacation homes I can’t afford; and visited Amazon.com to order more expensive treats for my...
As a heat wave hits America from coast to coast, it’s hot outside — but cool inside, thanks to the triumph of air conditioning. For most of human history, there was little people could do to avoid heat. During the day, it drove people outside of their homes to enjoy the shade of a tree or to take a refreshing dip in a lake or river. At night, folks in cities slept outside on their porches, roofs and even fire escapes. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, few homes had air con...
I dream of recreating some of the epic bike hikes I enjoyed as a kid back in the 1970s. My used Murray five-speed spyder-bike with the high handlebars only cost 25 bucks, but it was one of the coolest bikes of the age. Man, I loved that bike. During the long summer days, I rode with a group of kids. We’d ride for two or three hours in the county park, then make our way to McDonald’s for an orange drink and apple pie, which I paid for by borrowing a handful of coins out of my dad’s penny jar. It...
People are getting so used to increasing crime rates in cities across America, an etiquette is evolving between some muggers and their victims. I learned about this while I walked with my friend and his wife from a Washington, D.C., pub to their home six blocks from the Hill. “When you get mugged, there are certain rules you must follow,” said my friend’s wife, walking at a fast gait. “WHEN I get mugged?” I said, trying to keep up with her. “She’s right,” chimed in my friend. “Muggers are of...
The Fourth of July has always held a special power over me. I love the hot dogs and burgers and my mother’s delicious potato salad. Mostly, though, I’ve always cherished the great gatherings of family and friends that culminate with spectacular fireworks displays that light up the dark summer sky. I knew as a kid that on July 4 we were celebrating our many freedoms, which we earned by gaining independence from the British during the Revolutionary War, and which we cemented with the creation of...
The national debt broke the $32 trillion barrier this week. It’s a number so huge it’s incomprehensible to the average citizen. We knew $32 trillion was coming. It just got here a lot faster than the money experts thought, thanks to the roughly $5 trillion that the feds spent to help people and businesses withstand the many blows inflicted by Covid-19 and lockdowns. If you are a good citizen who’d like to gift a few bucks to the federal government to help pay down the national debt, you need...
Modern dads are portrayed as fools in television sitcoms and commercials. Lucky for me, they are the polar opposite of the loving, strong and decisive father who raised me. Over the years, as I clogged a toilet with an apple core, shattered a picture window with a baseball and hit a golf ball through a neighbor’s window, he had only one thing to say: “Son of a !!!” He always fixed the things I broke — once he found his tools, which I was forever losing. He often found them lying in the yard af...
It’s long past time for me to put a flagpole in the center of my front yard – one that holds a large American flag that dances proudly in the summer breeze. We bought such a flagpole for my father on his 70th birthday, shortly after he and my mother moved into a new house with a stately front yard. He was proud of his flag – with good reason. He was born during the Great Depression. As a boy, he was immersed in our country’s great unified effort to defeat mighty foes during World War II. He...
It’s a positive trend that I hope continues: the resurgence of summer picnics. According to Mental Floss, the Covid pandemic caused a picnic boom beginning in 2020 that is showing no signs of letting up. In 2020, with restaurants shuttered and experts telling us the bug didn’t spread so easily in outdoor air, many people, in particular younger people, began picnicking. I was lucky to grow up only a few miles from a county park that offers 3,000 acres of rolling green hills, walking and biking tr...
Every year, polls show that a large number of Americans don’t know why we celebrate Memorial Day. According to People, a 2020 Onepoll survey found that fewer than half of the 2,000 people surveyed knew that the purpose of Memorial Day was not to honor those who served in the armed forces, but to honor those who gave their lives while they served. Few Americans are aware that the original reason for Memorial Day dates back to the Civil War. Originally called Decoration Day, its purpose was to rem...
It’s an excuse I’ve been dreaming of: A reason to NOT mow my lawn. A “No Mow May” movement is afoot to nurture our bee population for a good reason: bees are incredibly important to our own survival.a According to Bee City USA, an initiative of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, bees are highly important pollinators whose busy work enables the creation of one third of the food and drink we consume. Here’s how bees work: They are drawn to plants for their sweet nectar, which the...
“Junior, this year to prepare for ‘Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day’ I want to teach you about all the taxes that you’ll have to pay as a working adult.” “What are taxes, Dad?” “Taxes are what the government will take out of your paycheck, and will tack onto almost everything you will purchase, to fund lots and lots of programs, Junior — many of which are unnecessary.” “Unnecessary, Dad?” “Junior, when our country was founded in 1776, our founders believed in limited government and th...
I will qualify for Medicare coverage in five years and, much to my surprise, I can’t wait to get government health coverage – because my current coverage is pricey. I recently finished a consulting assignment, which provided me full health benefits. To maintain my health insurance policy through Cobra, I must pay $750 a month. I also have to cover the first $3,300 of costs before full coverage kicks in. That means that if I go to the hospital with a bad flu – which I did for the first time in my...
IQs have dropped for the first time in American history, and the experts aren’t quite sure why. According to Neuroscience News, a new Northwestern University study finds that our average IQ scores have decreased in three out of four cognitive measures. The study found that “scores of verbal reasoning (logic, vocabulary), matrix reasoning (visual problem solving, analogies) and letter and number series (computational/mathematical) dropped during the study period .…” The only IQ measure to incr...
