What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
What can we reason but from what we know? -Alexander Pope
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 784
If you live in the country you probably share a bond with everyone else who lives outside city limit signs. This common denominator is the lowly mailbox. Since prehistoric times (which means longer than I can remember) the mailbox has been our link with the outside world. Unlike our city friends, rural mailboxes have character. In town, a mailbox may be just a slot in the front door or a metal box on the front porch. Country mailboxes have character. Mailboxes are a sentry assigned to a lonely...
Are humans’ best friends (dogs in particular) just what the doctor ordered? After being gone for a few days and sharing a reunion car ride with our dog, she peeked over the back seat with one of the most doleful I-thought-you’d-never-come-home-again looks imaginable. In one short moment she reminded us how much our animals support and sustain us. We are the ones who generally look after their basic needs – food, water, exercise, health – but they are the ones who chase tennis balls, bark at...
What practical garden tasks need to be done in fall? Well, here is one that does not have to be done: raking leaves. Use your mower to break up the leaves and feed the soil and give nutrients to the grass. If you like a nice green spring lawn, then do a fall winter fertilization for the grass to feed the roots and develop a healthy root system. In the spring, the lawn will green up sooner. Continue to water your lawn especially as this has been a dry fall. Watering your trees before the ground freezes will help them start the winter season...
To realize that “the human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked” one need only look at the anti-Israel protests around the world since Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,400 civilians and kidnapped 200 others. The horrific acts include: • More than 260 people concert-goers gunned down as they fled marauding butchers. Women were raped, their legs broken, some burned alive. • A grandmother taken hostage was executed by terrorists who filmed her murder then posted it to her social media account...
We all make mistakes in many areas of life. These mistakes are usually fairly harmless — we took a wrong turn while driving, used the wrong ingredients in a recipe and so on. But sometimes, our mistakes can be costly — especially those connected to investing. Here are some of the most common investment mistakes: • Too much buying and selling – some people find it exciting to constantly buy and sell investments in the pursuit of big gains. Yet, frequent trading can work against you in a couple...
Today’s title is half of a thought that has been lodged in my mind all morning. The complete thought is “What do you do where there is nothing to do? That is where I find myself at the moment. No irrigation water to tend to. Cows all turned out on the hay meadows at home. I can watch them from my rocker in the sunroom, sprayed all the weeds around the corrals and buildings yesterday. Been to town to get the mail earlier. Mowed the yard a couple of days ago. It’s so hot and dry it isn’t even tr...
Like clockwork, color has once more intervened on our everyday senses in warm and reassuring ways. As in past years, a cry has gone up declaring this year’s foliage the best in many seasons, but we actually mean it this time. Who is to argue? There is nary a complaint about the crimson reds, iridescent yellows and bright oranges coming to life. It’s not just trees, either. It includes bushes, shrubs, ground covers, scrub oak and the cotoneasters to name a few. We take it as it is given to us,...
As a conservative and a recovering legislator, I’ve always believed that public policy should be based on facts, not feelings. Laws, regulations and spending decisions from elected officials and executive branch agencies should be driven by science, economics and other relevant fields of research — not ideology or special interests. It’s simple really: Ignore the facts when making policy and the policy won’t work. As founding father John Adams famously quipped: Facts are stubborn things. But that raises the question: Where do we find the fac...
Immutable, unchanging, incapable of being changed. It is what we were taught when asked to describe characteristics of God. Other attributes in some way flowed easier — omniscient, invisible, immortal, ever-lasting. The labels sounded important and deified. As a child, I understood God to be active in our every day lives, never shirking opportunities to love us. Why, then, did God often seem far away? I theorized that the distance grew whenever we used clumsy sounding language, like “immutable,...
Alone. On foot. The Eastern Colorado Sandhills stretching as far as you can see in any direction. The second scariest sound a person can hear at that moment is the buzz of a rattlesnake somewhere very close by. Most would admit the thought of that situation might send shivers up quite a few spines. If this is the second scariest sound one could hear, what, you might ask is number one on the list? What bone-chilling, blood curdling sound could possibly top the rattler? A simple click. No more....
Letter to the Editor, I am writing to urge our community members to engage in learning about and then coming together to support the upcoming school bond initiative by voting Yes on 5B. It promises to bring significant improvements to our local educational facilities if we receive the BEST grant. Our school is an integral part of our community, and it is imperative that we ensure it receives the necessary upgrades to continue serving our students effectively. This school is where our children receive their foundational education. These...
If you’ve invested in an IRA for many decades, it may well turn into a key source of income for your retirement. Still, you might not deplete your IRA in your lifetime, especially if you also have a pension or a 401(k) and other investment income. So, if your IRA still has sizable assets after your passing, it would likely end up in your estate plan. If you leave your IRA to grown children or other family members, could they be hit with a big tax bill? Here’s a little background: Up until the...
Cattle prices have been on the rise this year. With a decline in the United States cow herd but no change in beef demand, prices for feeder and fed cattle have risen to levels not seen since 2014. Bred heifers and young bred cows are also up. Some early spring (January) calving commercial bred heifers are being offered for $3,000 or more per head. This has also created a price increase on weigh cows. As of the date of this article in eastern Colorado, open cows are bringing anywhere from $75 cwt for thin cows, to $119 cwt for high yield cows. T...
Well, she’s gone. I don’t know what I ever made me fall for her in the first place. Can’t remember what I saw in her. I must have been crazy. Ten years of battle, disagreements and constant irritation. The noise of tires taking her down the gravel driveway was music to my ears. I never really liked her, anyway. Yep. Old cow number 68 is gone. What’s that? You thought I was talking about something else? Shame on you. Number 68 was the most cantankerous, all around mean four-legged creature ever t...
Nestled among the “whences” and ‘comeths’ of Psalm 121 (KJV) lies a calmness and certainty that draws us when times are difficult and trying. The archaic lingual forms embedded in scripture bring a sense of comfort and permanence, familiarity that transcends even the narrowest constructions of faith, and shaping our relation to the Divine. It is beloved scripture, an attempt to quantify the unquantifiable. What better images to employ than those of mountains rising from the pedestrian plains...
Even if Prop HH passes, our taxes will go up! We didn’t need an election this November to receive a modest property tax reduction. The legislature can cut taxes anytime; it doesn’t need voter approval. But with Coloradans facing the largest property tax increase of our lifetime due to soaring home prices, the legislature chose to put a massive expansion of government on the ballot disguised as a property tax cut. Remember this: even if Proposition HH passes, property taxes will still inc...
Letter to the Editor, We are writing this letter to ask for your vote on Haxtun School Bond Initiative 5B. This will allow the raising of local property tax money to match state funds and leverage additional BEST money and grants. We pay plenty of taxes, but this is an opportunity to get some of our previous tax money back from the state coffers. We should hope to provide the best education for our children that we can afford. Having a modern school campus will go a long way in keeping our community strong. A great K-12 school system will help...
Today has been an unusually boring day. That is notable since I have no doubt few could ever equal the number of days I have spent doing … darn near nothing! How I got this way is my own darn fault. I’ve always been a stickler for doing things just right. Admittedly, that rarely happens but I hang on to that goal. I truly don’t have the skill set required to pull this off but I still try anyway. Cattle, of course, are a big part of my world. Yesterday we gathered them all, sorted off the cows...
Residual dry heat has descended on us signaling a seasonal change, and supplanting the plentiful moisture of spring and summer just past. We had no choice but to declare 2023 The Year Of The Yellow Flower. An optimal balance of moisture, sunshine, and heat produced a garden landscape filled with wild and domestic hues of yellows and bright oranges, more than we had ever seen False indigo and curlycup gumweed shared space with gaillardia and rudbeckia. Englemann daises and a variety of ornamental sunflowers with broad heads claimed the sunniest...
Letter to the Editor: I am writing this letter to encourage support of School Bond Initiative 5B, which would increase the bond for voters in the Haxtun School District to raise the needed funds to apply for a B.E.S.T. grant. These funds would allow the school to pursue construction of a new Pre-K, Elementary, Auxiliary Gym and Agriculture Education Facility and I encourage you to vote yes on this measure for several reasons. The BEST grant was established to benefit schools in the rural parts of the state to allow schools access to the funds...
Sometime in our lives, we all have met someone we immediately connect with. Something just meshes and a sense of appreciation between both parties develops. I have been very fortunate to add several people to my list of close friends this way. A couple of days ago, however, I added someone whom I knew immediately would be on that list. His sense of humor and mine would be carbon copies. There was one thing, however that would complicate our relationship. I never really met him. He came to me in...
Time is a constant in our lives, though it can feel malleable depending on our awareness of its presence. Getting older appears to be a time accelerant. Recent months and years bring urgency to where we discern ourselves to be in any one moment, leaving important questions in their wake, particularly how we intend to structure the remainder of our lives. We are not alone in this. My grandparents often pondered what a surprise it was to discover they were crossing into uncharted territory in...
Something to keep in mind as we go into another hay storage season is keeping an eye on the temperature of your hay stack. With a particularly wet 2023 hay season it is possible that hay didn’t get baled at optimal moisture to prevent microbial activity and respiration leading to the warming of bales and potentially a hay fire. Hay that is baled above 20 percent moisture without using a preservative is generally at greater risk for fire and the critical moisture content for large bales is even lower. As hay is cut, dried, and baled it continues...
If you’re a long-term investor, your portfolio may stay fairly stable over time. However, that doesn’t mean you will never sell any investments. But when should you sell — and why? Here are some scenarios to consider: • If an investment has consistently underperformed – For one reason or another, some investments may not live up to your expectations. Rather than holding these investments in the hope that they will eventually show consistently positive returns, you might be better off selling the...
The Haxtun School District is a pillar of the Haxtun Community. We pride ourselves on having the best students, educators and facilities. The elementary school and vocational agriculture buildings were built in the 1960s and no longer meet current health, safety and educational standards. When the district completed a master plan update in spring of 2023, the results came back with approximately $4,000,000 in prioritized issues that need to be corrected within the next five years, but resolving the urgent deficiencies falls short of creating a...
