Stories from Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Do you have a young person trying to choose a career? Looking to change careers yourself? If you have the aptitude, you’ll find yourself in demand if you can become a doctor or pursue many other types of medical careers. Thanks to aging baby boomers requiring more medical care, and an increased number of retirements, the demand for physicians and other health-care workers is expected to boom...

Downtown McCook the smell of smoke was in the air. With the thoughts of the devastation recently wrought across neighboring rural Western Kansas this, old has-been rural, fireman was curious. Hop in my airplane and go check it out—surely it wouldn’t take long as the smoke smell was quite strong, and visible, at the airport...

There are many things that our city does for us that I am grateful for and one of them is providing for first responders in case of fire or crime. It is important for them to be able to locate an address quickly when time is of the essence. In February, our city began a process to identify the many residential and commercial buildings in our city that did not have address numbers displayed or were incorrectly displayed...

President Trump has plenty of hare-brained ideas, but plans to liquidate the National Endowment for the Arts is not one of them. The NEA is corrupt and useless, full of phonies, morons and crackpots. Wasteful government spending of taxpayers’ money should be stopped and elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts is a good place to begin...

Offices of the Smithsonian magazine are located in Washington D.C. and many miles from Nebraska. Recently while attending a board meeting of the Trenton Public Library I checked out the march 2017 copy of that publication. Alex Shoumatoff’s Mystery on the Savanna caught my attention. He describes his historic trip to Uganda, Africa and the Akagera National Park...

McCOOK, Neb. — More than half of McCook’s liquor establishments will see an annual licensing fee increase in the coming year as part of changes approved by the McCook City Council last night. During Monday’s regularly scheduled meeting, City Council provided final approval for an ordinance which increases city fees for 16 of McCook’s 26 retail liquor licensees, while decreasing fees for six others and leaving four unchanged. ...

Cecil “Ray” Mullen April 4, 1938 - March 17, 2017 NORTH PLATTE, Neb. — Cecil “Ray” Mullen, 78, of North Platte, formerly of Maywood, died Friday, March 17, 2017, at Great Plains Health. He was born on April 4, 1938, to Charles and Tracy (Blake) Mullen in Maywood. ...

McCOOK, Neb. — The Red Willow County commissioners authorized the purchase of two new vehicles for the sheriff’s department during the board’s weekly meeting Monday morning. Three McCook car dealers submitted bids. The county will purchase a 2017 Dodge Ram 1500 crew-cab 4-wheel-drive four-door pickup with a 5.7 liter V8 engine from Deveny Motors in McCook for $26,976, minus $4,000 for the trade-in of a high-mileage 2004 Jeep, for a bid of $22,976...

McCook Public Power/REA crews respond to downed power lines about 10:15 a.m., Monday, on County Road 392 and Highway 6&34 about a mile east of the old Republican Valley school between McCook and Indianola. Scott Farber, MPPD operations manager, said a BSB Construction escavator snagged overhead power lines while working for the Nebraska Department of Roads in the north right-of-way along the highway. ...