By Glenn Dromgoole When my daughter Janet was ten, she suggested one day that we go over to the nearby elementary school and shoot baskets. She was just learning how to play basketball, and it was a beautiful day. So off we went. The school was better than the park, she said, because the school had eight-foot goals as well
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By Jim Nichols There are words in our language that can have quite different meanings depending on the context of their use. One such word merits our interest here; the word is “agency.” Most commonly, when someone uses that word the reference is to a division of the government, that is, some federal agency. For example, the Central Intelligence Agency
Read moreTHE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury It’s usually a “ho-hum” thing when my Uncle Mort calls. If it’s about business, I make sure to “think monkey” in front of it. Recently, his “jabber” included details of his “blind hog luck” while fetching groceries from the thicket’s general store. His visit coincided with the arrival of the bread truck, this time
Read moreTHE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury It should come as no surprise to those of us who have reached “geezerhood” that our ear drums are challenged annually by random sounds–from up and down, here, there and all around. It’s the sounds of New Year’s resolutions crashing against the floor. Sometimes we cry, creating a tear-filled pond en route to becoming
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Dr. Leslie Hutchins, Speaker MLK Jr. BanquetLeslie Hutchins, MD, is a 2000 graduate of Cooper High School and a 2004 Abilene Christian University graduate. She earned her medical degree at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She completed both a general surgery internship and an internship in neurological surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, where
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By Loretta Fulton The Abilene Interfaith Council is co-hosting two sessions with science ambassador and author JD Stillwater on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan. 20 and 21. A graduate of Cornell University, Stillwater “moves and inspires thousands of people all over North America and the globe with science-centered messages of awe and deep kinship,” according to his bio. On Wednesday, Jan.
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By Marianne Wood The word “reducing” makes me grin. It conjures up a machine that women in the 1950s and 60s used to jiggle their buttocks and arms in order to get rid of fat. My grandmother had access to one in her Dallas condo building. That is where I first encountered this slimming contraption that had a strap attached
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By Jim Nichols Sometimes I write to myself rather than to you, readers. I was probably six or seven years old when I received my first, very own Bible. Oak Park Christian Church must have had a Bible giveaway to children of a certain age. I was proud of that Bible; my father had wonderful printing ability, and he inscribed
Read moreTHE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury As the hours of 2025 dwindled to single digits, Americans FINALLY heard a new sports expression that is NOT likely to catch on. The guy from ABC-TV–describing the Michigan/Texas football game in Orlando–uttered a couple of ill-fitting words as he attempted to explain that one line shown on TV screens during football games is
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Spirit Of Abilene 