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Buying better raspberries
My children and I had been busy picking raspberries, enduring the heat of the sun. We finally felt we had enough to fill all of the orders so, sweaty and thirsty, we retreated to the cool of the house. We filled the flats and found …
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Redefining life: Our son’s stories
My son, Louie, 24, and another young man, Robert Ames, 23, are just a year apart, almost to the day but they share a common history. Both young men have had to fight for their lives at a young age while their mothers learned about …
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Want hope? Make a change
President Obama was supposed to be all about hope and change. But after almost four years he’s squeezed the hope out of most of us. A new Rasmussen poll is the latest proof that the only hope of getting out of our economic ditch is …
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I owe Mitt an apology
Presumptive nominee Mitt Romney is seemingly fixated on apologies. He’s obsessed with apologies like Bristol Palin is obsessed with teen abstinence—like BP is obsessed with clean energy—Marcus Bachmann with curing homosexual men … Mitt’s book is titled “No Apology.” He’s convinced the problem with Obama …
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State Capitol Week in Review
The Arkansas tourism industry grew by 4.3 percent last year, the largest annual increase since 2008. Travelers through Arkansas spent $5.6 billion in 2011. The number of travelers increased to more than 23 million, the highest number in three years. That figure refers to the …
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Shedding light on gastroparesis
Independence Co. woman shares struggle, career with Dick Clark Productions Frances Lacey would have been honored to have been Dick Clark’s daughter, but she isn’t. While the Independence County woman worked for Dick Clark Productions in California for 34 years and got to know …
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Governors from Batesville
Batesville claims three former governors as its own: Thomas S. Drew (1844-48), Elisha Baxter (1872-74) and William R. Miller (1877-81). Of the three, only Gov. Miller was a native of Independence County. Miller was born to John and Clara (Moore) Miller in 1823 on the …
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Happy birthday, World Wide Web! Thanks for expanding our freedoms
Welcome to adulthood, World Wide Web. You were born on Aug. 6, 1991, as an interconnected system that makes information accessible around the globe. That makes you 21. Since I can’t buy you a drink, how about a First Amendment salute instead? As it happens, …
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Saving distracted pedestrians
“Distracted Pedestrians Are Just As Dumb As Distracted Drivers,” blares a headline on the San Francisco Weekly website. Old news. Back in my day, a particularly klutzy person was mocked as being “unable to walk and chew gum at the same time.” My mother still …
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Mass killings: People more traumatized than society
When James Holmes murderously interrupted the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colo. on July 20, opening fire and killing 12 people and injuring 58 others, it was a sickening deja vu for many of us here in San Diego. On July 18, 1984, recently fired …
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State oversight of fracking
I first heard about fracking (the drilling of natural-gas wells using a method known as hydraulic fracturing) in 2009 when environmental advocates charged that natural-gas drilling could endanger New York City’s water resources. I lived in the city at that time, so the news that …
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Husbands: The gorillas in our midst
Do women have keener ears when it comes to children? I was at the zoo recently where I witnessed a scenario that made me both frustrated and empathetic toward men. As my kids and I were exiting the gorilla habitat we walked past a dad …
