December 2021

FOR KANSANS wanting to visit friends and family this holiday season, filling up their gas tanks will be one of the most expensive price tags in decades. The national average price of gasoline recently rose to $3.42 a gallon, up from $2.11 a year ago, according to AAA.

ON NOV. 11, 1996, just days after he lost his bid for the presidency, Bob Dole appeared on the “Late Show with David Letterman.” Letterman and the crowd greeted him with smiles and loud applause. Letterman’s first question was straight: “Bob, what have you been doing lately?” Dole smiled. “Apparently, not enough!”

IF YOU ARE married to a nurse (or otherwise someone who works at a business open 24/7), you may not always celebrate the holidays on the actual date. For instance, this year we celebrated Thanksgiving (with invited friends) on the first Sunday in December, which also happened to be at the end of Hanukkah, which we’ll be celebrating sometime in January (for us it’s a Hanukkah meal). Christmas will happen sometime between the actual date and the New Year.

MY GREAT-GRAND- FATHER was a Union Soldier, and he served for 3 years. For the rest of his life, he voted republican, as many Union Soldiers did, for the republican party was the Party of Lincoln, and having served him for those three years as a soldier, it was because of Lincoln that he continued to serve his party.

I HAVE BEEN STARING into the deep, dark abyss of job burnout for over a year now, wondering how to move forward with a newspaper situation that seemed hopeless. When I started working for the Pratt Tribune in 2016, there were 11 employees doing what I have been trying to do mostly myself for two years now. As “strategic financial decisions” from corporate mergers of newspaper giants forced small, rural newspapers across the country, including the Pratt Tribune, Kiowa County Signal and St. John News, into a smaller and smaller boxes, it became harder and harder for me to answer the question - why do you continue?