By Jim Nichols I cannot believe that I am the only person who feels this way occasionally— “I have no idea what I am doing.” It is not always true, certainly. For years I could walk into a college biology classroom and feel confident about the known science I was about to try to explain to captive students. Occasionally, they
Read moreTHE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury Relax. This is NOT going to be another one of those “promise pieces” about helpful resolutions that might elevate life for me in 2025. I leave that to others. In fact, were I to make a New Year’s resolution, it would be the determination to avoid making annual resolutions in the future. My aged
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By Glenn Dromgoole Will Allen Dromgoole was a prolific poet in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She was born in Tennessee in 1860 and died there in 1934. She wrote more than 7,000 poems and a dozen books. For a brief time in the late 1890s, she lived in Texas and even had a speaking gig in Abilene in
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Monsignor Robert N. Bush, former longtime priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Abilene, died at the age of 81 on Jan. 17, 2025, in Abilene. Msgr. Bush was pastor of Sacred Heart for 23 years, from 1996 to 2019, when he was reassigned by Bishop Michael Sis of the Diocese of San Angelo to a role of Reduced Active
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By Loretta Fulton It’s a natural fit for Ben Siburt, a longtime former minister at Highland Church of Christ. As executive director of Youth Voice, a drop-in center for Abilene teens, Ben is answering the call to serve that he first experienced as a youngster. “I grew up in a family with parents that used their lives to serve others,
Read moreBy Danny Minton An anonymous story that I came across tells of two men who were seriously ill and shared a hospital room. Both men had to lie flat on their backs, except for one man, the one nearer the window, who was allowed to sit up for one hour a day to take his medicine. This one hour would
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By Jim Nichols It all started at 5218 Olive when I was six years old. My father planted two small elm trees in our back yard. One officially “belonged” to me and the other to my only sister at the time. One thing I learned was that getting trees started successfully after transplantation was uncertain. Indeed, my sister’s died within
Read moreTHE IDLE AMERICANCommentary by Dr. Don Newbury To most Texans, the name “Rambo” may mean little, but to Todd Compton it evokes memories from his childhood, when kinfolk spoke of 17th century ancestors who lived in what is now Philadelphia. Peter Gunnarson Rambo (1611-1698) was most discussed, and Compton, now 52, remembers the accounts he heard in his grandmother’s kitchen. His genealogical
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A Holocaust remembrance exhibit is on display at the Grace Museum through Jan. 31. International Holocaust Remembrance Day takes place each year on January 27th, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. For the past few years, the Grace Museum has collaborated with Abilene Christian University’s Introduction to Public History: Interpreting American Pasts course to create monthly
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Spirit Of Abilene 