I've heard "the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away" used in the context of dealing with times of tragedy, loss and grief.

       I only have one personal Vietnam story. It's about my dad's cousin, Mike.      As a kid, I only met Mike once, and was in awe of him.

       Question: Who coined the phrase "March Madness?"      Answer:  I do not know.

       During a conversation with a Washington County law enforcement officer about a decade ago, the officer let it slip that he was going to run for sheriff the next year.

       One of the ways in which modern America media fails is this: We spend way too little time writing about things that matter, and way too much time writing about people who don't.

       Twice in the past week, I was the only media guy in the room when someone said, "I don't like the media; I really don't like the media," or  "The media is the problem.

  I Corinthians 6:12-20 Matthew 4:1-11 "I am yours and you are mine" When my father died, it put me into a kind of identity crisis.

Everyday we wake up and think, "What are we going to put on the website before the e-mail goes out at 11:45 ..." Usually we don't wonder if the news we put on the site will go further than the folks that know and love Vinton, because those are the only ones we care about serving.

       ACT 1 was preparing to open its spring show. The Vinton-Shellsburg Jazz Band was celebrating its second place finish at the Jazz Festival, and its invitation to the Iowa High School Jazz Championships in April.

Warning: contains warm sappy thoughts about a dog... Yesterday we put the website to a sort of test, asking for help in locating our dog. Thanks to everyone's help we were able to locate him within a couple hours of the e-mail being sent out! We had comments sent in with information about him and a detailed phone call, thanks to everyone who had spotted him and told us about it! It's amazing how big a dog can look when he's trying to crawl up in your lap, or when he's putting his head on your lap for attention, or he's nudging your elbow while you are trying to type stories on your computer and how annoying he can be when he wants you to just touch him so he can sleep on the floor at your feet.