The Hartley Sentinel-The Everly/Royal News - Serving O'Brien & Clay Counties

It's September and kids are back in school. As a retired high school teacher, I always feel nostalgic this time of year as I remember the students. When they stepped into the building, the halls came...

It’s fair time in Iowa, and all across the Hawkeye State folks are flocking to the fairgrounds. After last summer’s lockdown, they’re looking forward to seeing old friends and neighbors at the exhib...

Americans celebrated their independence before they were independent. In July of 1776, colonists heard the Declaration of Independence read aloud for the first time in Philadelphia’s Independence S...

As kids, we played a game called Simon Says. Standing in lines, we faced our leader, "Simon," and listened intently for commands. If Simon said, "Simon says, 'Hop'," we all hopped. If Simon said,...

The world is drowning in plastic waste. Millions of animals, birds and sea creatures die every year from ingesting bits of plastic or becoming entangled in plastic litter. Every year, over 8 million...

Capitalism has been the engine driving our economy since the earliest settlers arrived to colonize the New World under charters from the Virginia Company of London and the Massachusetts Bay Company....

On Jan. 20, within hours of entering the Oval Office, President Biden signed an executive order halting further development of the Keystone XL pipeline. In doing so, he set in motion a series of...

In the aftermath of a yearlong tornado, Americans were dropped into the Land of Oz. Life as we know it no longer exists. Our new surroundings are strange, and things are not as they seem. Everything...

In January, our representatives and senators head to Washington to be sworn into office. The 117th Congress will be called to order, and the nation’s business will resume. The last session of the g...

As if our political landscape weren't already a warzone, an added grenade was thrown last month with the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Those on the left mourned the passing of a hero and an icon,...

Two months from today, Americans will vote in what is arguably the most important election in our lifetime. Yet, 62 days out, the ballot is awash in a sea of controversy. Due to safety concerns...

On March 16, a bomb dropped on Iowa when Gov. Kim Reynolds recommended all schools close for four weeks. It wasn’t a surprise as we’d been expecting it in light of the dire COVID-19 warnings at the...

One year ago, the title of this column was, "The flag is more than a fashion statement." In it, I wrote about the history of our great flag and my concern that it is trivialized when its image is...

When I was growing up in the Fifties, I awoke on Monday mornings to the sound of the old Maytag washer humming in the basement Mom’s weekly laundry routine followed the same pattern as most h...

Although it seems like a lifetime ago, we've only been at war with the invisible enemy – the COVID-19 virus – for a couple of months. Earliest reports of the novel coronavirus were horrendous – the d...