Even though I’ve never met Pete Larson, it feels as if I know him.
Pete and his wife, Hilarie, and their three children live on a 45-acre farm located near Ithaca, New York. More than 1,300 miles separate the Larson farm and ours.
I became acquainted with Pete and his family during a beastly cold snap last winter. It was too chilly to exercise outdoors, so I took a spin on our elliptical machine. Walking on the elliptical is boring, so I surfed YouTube.
At one point I stumbled across some guy who was overhauling a Farmall “M” diesel. I can recall when such tractors were still being used, so I was instantly fascinated. There were numerous cliffhanger moments. Would Pete successfully extract that frozen bolt? Would he be able to locate obsolete replacement parts? How long would Pete’s local machine shop hold the engine block hostage?
By The Associated Press Today in History Today is Tuesday, April 20, the 110th day of 2021. There are 255 days left in the year. Todayís Highlight in Hi
After covering the 60-day legislative session, I almost always need the week after to recover, decompress, and catch up on things. For example, I feel like I
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After covering the 60-day legislative session, I almost always need the week after to recover, decompress and catch up on things.
For example, I feel like I missed the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus in the state. I didn’t. I did write about it even while covering the session, but I feel like I didn’t really stop to reflect.
I’ll never forget when my editor the week after the 2020 legislative session asked me to talk to the Department of Health and Human Resources about this coronavirus thing. I rolled my eyes.
You see, I had lived through the SARS, bird flu and swine flu scares. I had even participated in state pandemic tabletop exercises nearly 15 years ago when I worked in radio. It’s not that I didn’t think a pandemic could happen, but I just didn’t think COVID-19 would rise to that level.
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“America is great because America is good. When she ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”
Many U.S. presidents and politicians have attributed these words to Alexis de Tocqueville, a French political scientist who came to America in the 1830s to study the ethical foundation of our constitutional republic.
Jefferson proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that the ethical base of our government is the “laws of nature and nature’s God.”
These laws declare that “all men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” God and government were united.