By ART CULLEN It ain’t the heat, it’s the humiliation that gets to you on a football Saturday in Ames, Iowa City and Manhattan (Kansas, that is). Iowa State fell to Northern …

By DON BEHM June was National Family Month. You may be reading this later but that’s OK because every month should be National Family Month. I often write about families. I came from a …

The Storm Lake School District was dealt a stunning blow when bids for the high school renovation project came in nearly $2.5 million over the $17 million budget. The school board has little choice …

The number of abortions dropped 30% over the past five years in Iowa, according to figures from the Iowa Department of Public Health reported Wednesday by The Des Moines Register. People who oppose …

We dutifully report the test scores from the Storm Lake School District every time they come out. And every time, the district students come up short on proficiency ratings required by the federal …

By DON BEHM Labor day is coming up and I thought it was a good time to write about labor and Labor Day. All the holidays are nice but I like Labor Day the best of all. We were married on Labor …

By ART CULLEN Bruce Braley strode onto new turf Saturday in his quest to succeed Tom Harkin as Iowa’s liberal senator. The Democratic congressman from Waterloo made his first campaign …

Our thanks and gratitude go to Storm Lake Mayor Jon Kruse, who announced on Tuesday that he will not seek another term after having served for 14 years. (Previously, he served 10 years on the city …

By ART CULLEN We just finished a couple months’ worth of printing for our friends in Sheldon whose newspaper production plant burned down in June. It left me with a distinct impression: …

Cutting spending on Medicare is easier from Washington than Storm Lake, Sac City or Pocahontas, where the elderly population is growing. So it went last week that the Office of Inspector General for …

By DON BEHM I was riding back to Methodist Manor and wondering what my next Cracker Barrel story should be. There isn’t a lot of activity that I can write about. Most of my stories have …

Buena Vista County has a trails committee. And a subcommittee. They talk. They mull. They look at a map and come to the conclusion that the subcommittee needs to meet in a month or so. They will talk …

By ART CULLEN Small rural school districts talk sharing because of, first, athletics. The main reason they talk athletic sharing is because of football. The small school can’t field a team …

By DON BEHM As I write this story it is three days after my 86th birthday. I have been glued to the TV most of the day watching the news of the tornado that destroyed most of the city of Moore, …

Storm Lake offers two things to make life more fun and interesting that most other rural communities do not: a nice lake and a nice, small liberal arts university. Fail to take advantage of either …

Rapidly rising farmland prices and cash rents might be moderated this year as corn and soybean prices are on a steep drop with optimistic yield forecasts. New crop corn has dropped below $5 per …

Those of us old enough to list “The Graduate” as one of our favorite movies can remember the famous piece of advice from old Mr. Robinson to young Dustin Hoffman: “Plastics.” …

By ART CULLEN Back in the day — content warning to youth: old-guy ramblings to follow — we pounded away on L.C. Smith typewriters over the din of Linotypes and the occasional hot …

By DON BEHM Yesterday, I watched a soapbox derby race on TV. This reminded me of orange crates. Many years ago oranges and other fruit came in wooden boxes we called orange crates. Orange …

If you are born poor and want to get rich, you are far better off in Storm Lake, Iowa, than Atlanta, Ga., or Memphis, Tenn. So says a team of well-regarded economic researchers from Harvard and …