Opinions

I’m a reluctant navigator.
For one thing, it’s a position that rarely has an upside. Navigate correctly, and you never get a pat on the back, but miss a turn and you don’t hear the end of it. While I don’t consider myself bad at directions I’m not at the head of the class, either.
That’s why I was happy to turn over the chore to Alan and July on our recent trip along the Danube River in Austria. They proved to be good leaders.

Watching Mom make roll-ups was a study in motion and efficiency. With two pans on a medium-hot fire, she’d ladle the batter, swirl it in the pan, flip it in a wink and serve them to the nearby kitchen table.
In a half hour, she could turn out dozens of the breakfast treats. She had to, I could eat a half-dozen myself, and Dad and my siblings weren’t far behind. Plus there could be extended family and/or friends bellied up to the kitchen table.

Children seem to have an inborn sense of secretiveness that leads to all sorts of misunderstandings and misbegotten adventures. I’m not sure where it comes from, perhaps it is the “self” attempting to define itself, to draw the lines between itself and the rest of the world. There are simply things children keep to themselves and protect jealously from their parents, siblings and best friends. It’s that little knob of reality known as “me” as opposed to everything and everybody else that is “not me.”

We aren’t just owners of your newspaper.
We’re stewards.
And I’m incredibly excited for a new team– including me and the people you know– taking over that caretaker role.
As you read in a news story this week, Woodward Communications has purchased your local newspaper. My business partner, Stuart Clark, and I have sold West Branch Communications, which includes the West Branch Times, West Liberty Index, Mount Vernon-Lisbon Sun, Marion Times, Solon Economist, North Liberty Leader and Linn News-Letter.

“Did they show you the devil’s hole?” the young man across the picnic table asked me.
It was the third day of our ride.
It was a bicycling trip we made in August. Sabra’s sister, Lisa, and her husband Allen proposed it and we gladly joined. Who wouldn’t want to spend a couple of weeks visiting Austria and cycling along the Danube River to Vienna? Two friends of Lisa’s, Karen and Julie, also joined to make our group six.