Stories from Wednesday, May 18, 2011

IMPERIAL, Nebraska -- Feeding people is nothing new in Southwest Nebraska and Northwest Kansas. After all, farmers have been producing a harvest from the wide open plains for generations, an endeavor that will continue as long as there is sun, rain, land and people willing to do the work...

McCook, Nebraska, Elementary Crackerjack students fly their home-made tetrahedron kites in a intermittent breeze Tuesday morning. Catching the on-again, off-again wind in their four-sided, triangle-shaped kites, Isabelle Beasley, inset, and Elsi Rodewald race across the playground. ...

As a teacher and a taxpayer, I find your stance on the CIR and teacher pay reprehensible and hypocritical. Just a little over a year ago YOU wrote a letter to the school boards urging them to raise teacher salaries. YOU supported higher teacher pay in Nebraska knowing that schools are a major support for the growth of any economy...

Was the marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver doomed from the start? Is political polarization bound to increase in the coming years? Depending on your interpretation of a study co-authored by a University of Nebraska political scientist, the answer to both questions may be yes...

THORNTON, Colorado -- Melvin Ervin Bailey, 74, of Arapahoe, Nebraska, died Saturday (May 14, 2011) surrounded by his family. He worked for United Asphalts, Inc. for several years as a plant manager. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1958-62. He was preceded in death by his parents, Ervin and Millie Bailey; daughter, Laurie Ann Carlton; brothers, Edgar, Edward and Marlin; and sisters, Ferna and Geraldine...

Many years ago, during a job interview at an insurance agency in Worland Wyoming, I was asked, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" The inquiry was met with a blank stare. I've never been one to set goals, so I had no satisfactory answer to offer that day and left the interview in the same condition I had arrived in -- unemployed. Maybe the question is of particular importance to those in the insurance game...