For Americans under 50, inflation is little more than a theoretical concept. But for those of us born in the late 1950s and 1960s, the inflati…
It has been a little while since I’ve done one of these. Most of the time we use this space for some of the columnists our readers tell us the…
I have a confession. I’ve never really understood county fairs.
A couple weeks ago I introduced myself and asked for feedback on what people like about The Country Today and what they’d like to see done dif…
As the new editor for The Country Today, I have just one thing to say to our readers: Help!
The first rule of road trips is to never embark upon a road trip. At least not one like ours: 10 days and 2,500 miles of tent camping in the n…
Tonight we’re a party of five: Dad and daughters and our husbands. Dad’s been eager to try the fish fry at Irvine, the bar where he ate every …
The biggest gold rush in U.S. history is about to hit rural America and it won’t involve corn or cattle or even gold. Instead, the big money w…
Lightning is a standard fear of the kid. All that sky. All those nimbo cumulus clouds. It was somewhere about 3rd grade, a teacher’s passing r…
We didn’t have The Weather Channel.
“Are all men idiots?”
Of all the daily chores my father performed on the southern Illinois dairy farm of my youth, the most vital to me each winter morning was his …
No one was shocked recently when the General Accountability Office (GAO) announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had overpaid farm…
Oats have been said to be a Scots crop. Oatmeal was our farmhouse habit, if more truthfully it was a religion. Our father consumed oatmeal eve…
His name was Lyndon, pastor to the Liberty Corners Methodist kirk at the corner of County Trunk J and Old Amish Road. I was newly out of the s…
Upon unloading our gear at the Coon Fork County Park campsite, my wife Meredith is reminded that I am still not the seasoned camper I pretend to be.
In the summer of 1972, Rhinelander Mayor Claribel Prosser received a letter from Clayton Bailey, curator of Wonders of the World Museum in Cal…
Controversy surrounding a recently proposed housing development on Lake Hallie prompted me to dig back into a time before there were any homes here.
A few weeks back, my father-in-law turned to his sister and said, “I’ve only got one goal left. I want to live long enough to see my tomatoes …
It is well after midnight and I’m standing in the dewy grass of our backyard. A puppy has been leading me by a blue leash in erratic circles f…
A vegetarian walks into a bar for the meat raffle and air conditioning. I know it sounds like the start of bad joke, but I recently visited He…
We thank you for the article by Larry Scheckel about some of his family of bygone days. It was read with keen interest and we read it more tha…
Many of us older people can’t believe the mess our country is in. There is so much division in our society today. And many people are yelling …
To the editor:
To the editor:
To the editor:
To the editor: