Columns

Do you ever turn the TV on just to have some background noise and suddenly you find one of those “oldie but goodie” shows from your youth?

Then, you’re watching said show or movie on TV, completely forgetting that you were going to do something else but can’t seem to look away from the screen?

That’s how I feel about the Sound of Music. It was on TV the other day and it was right in the middle of the movie.

I hadn’t watched the SOM since high school because we did the musical on it and if you didn’t have a big/important part, you sat in the music room watching the movie over and over again every day we had class.

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Technology, while it certainly can, at times, test a person of my own existence in my life, last Wednesday night I witnessed something that had probably happened before but it really reached out to me when I was watching a commercial on the television for Consumer Cellular.

Many of you may have seen it as well but they were obviously trying to sell their services to people that were born in the same time I was...1964 flashed on the screen oh so briefly, but long enough for me to be mildly offended... After all I’m not old, I’m just seasoned.

So what if I was the kid that couldn’t get home fast enough after school on the day when I knew we were getting that new thing called “cable TV.” If my memory serves me correctly, because I am “seasoned” you know, we had something like 13 channels which was crazy considering most of my life I grew up with four channels, ABC, NBC, CBS and of course, ETV; at least that’s what we called it, today ETV is known as NET.

At the end of November, Nebraska closed another successful deer hunting season. While hunting is a great benefit of our constitutional right to bear arms, it is not the primary reason our founders chose to specifically enumerate this protection in our Bill of Rights.

Nationwide our Second Amendment rights continue to be under threat. In fact, ongoing attempts by the House majority to weaken our Second Amendment rights, not to mention possible future presidential actions, have destabilized the arms and ammunition markets causing widespread shortages and shocking prices for common Smith hunting and self-defense firearms and ammunition.

In order to protect our Second Amendment rights, we must always be vigilant to ensure the government is upholding these rights. For this reason, I have cosponsored several bills and signed letters which seek to cement these rights, and to gain ground which has been unconstitutionally lost in the past.

Given the way things have gone so far this year, it should come as no surprise that Christmas 2020 is shaping up to be…so 2020.

There was no traditional Christmas tree lighting ceremony and carols at the Nebraska Capitol this year because there’s no Christmas tree in the popular Capitol Rotunda. The Capitol Commission decided it was best to keep staff and the public away from the coronavirus by avoiding the three C’s: crowded places, close contact and confined spaces.

It takes a Herculean effort each year to cut a tall pine or fir Schmidt tree donated by a family or tree nursery and haul it to the Capitol. Staff from several state agencies are involved each year and it takes a number of people just to muscle the tree up the outside steps on the north side of the building to get it to the second-floor rotunda. Then it has to be erected, strung with lights and decorated with ornaments from Nebraska’s 93 counties.

This has been a weird season for one act.

Mostly because for many one act public performances only immediate family was allowed, and no audience was permitted at our conference and districts competitions. And let me tell you, sitting in the audience with no one else around except the judges is kinda strange.

Although I have not had the chance to see Sandy Creek’s One Act—due to reasons of them being unable to perform—I did get the chance to see Harvard’s and obviously being one of Sutton’s coaches I saw theirs.

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From week to week especially during the busy runs of school activities, once in a great while if you observe what’s on the doors or the walls of any school that you’re in you run into something that just almost punches you in the face... Well, Saturday, while covering the Harvard wrestling invitational, a sign reached right out and grabbed my full attention. You could say that it “punched me in the face,” so to speak!

“Attitude is everything...Pick the right one.”

Just a simple sign hanging on a door of an educator and coach that I have the utmost respect for, one of so many educators and coaches that I’ve worked with over the last almost 40 years... Scott Trimble.

Holidays for many can be truly tough, especially this year given the pandemic. But this year each and every one of you who are reading the Bull this week, whether it is in the form of you personally or as a family, I encourage every one of you to find a passion of yours and to give that passion.

I wasn’t able to be around family for Thanksgiving and we will see if I’ll be able to be around family for Christmas, but I know my family well enough, as small as we are we can be powerful when our hearts are involved.

Find a good cause this year to give the gift that goes unnoticed; give from your heart to something that you truly believe in supporting and make a difference.

Since the pandemic firmly planted roots in the U.S., nursing homes and assisted living facilities have had to shut their doors to visitors, and even reduced the amount of contact from resident to resident, all in an attempt to keep residents healthy and safe.

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Harvard’s One Act earned the top spot at the Twin Valley Conference meet Tuesday, Nov. 17.

This is the second first-place victory this season, having previously earned ones from every judge and ultimately placing first at the Wilcox Hildreth One Act Festival Nov. 9.

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In case you missed it, two weeks ago we had a presidential election. But it was more than just a presidential election, it was one of the most divisive and contentious elections I can recall in my lifetime. The last election that even resembles this one was 20 years ago in 2000 when vice president Al Gore went up against Texas Governor George W. Bush. In that election, it all came down to the state of Florida. Recount after recount. Hanging chads, dimpled chads, swinging chads. In the end, the United States Supreme Court had to step in to put an end to the recount madness.