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Well, John, your Christmas story was an easy read until Holy Communion.
Then, I started getting nervous. What was up with John? Clearly, John was not feeling well. You elicited genuine discomfort. Would he, or wouldn’t he?
I thought, “Oh come on, John, don’t.” Thank God, you didn’t. Throw-up. Up-chuck! Lose your cookies! I was gratified that you, just, fainted. Whew!
Yeah, we lived two and a quarter blocks from O.L.G.C. Church, from our front door. If my brothers and I went out the back door; down the alley a few steps; then, cut, diagonally, across Kate Rath’s back yard to Duffy Miller’s house on the corner, it was only a block and a half to church. That was our usual route because more times than not, one of us served 7 a.m. daily Mass for Fr. Howley.
On special occasions, like Christmas, circa 1953, Mom would encourage us to leave for church with her, because “Fr. Howley locked the doors” when the time came. I believed her in 1953. Brothers Ed, John and Joe, Moose Mullen, Ace McCartan and John A McGowan served most of the weekday Masses in the early 1950s.
We were town kids. Sr. Dominica taught me the Latin responses circa 1958.
“Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam” Had to know them all. “Confiteor.” “Gloria.” “Credo.” “Suscipiat.” “Sanctus.” “Pater Noster.” Still know them. (Did not know what I was saying, most of the time, but I loved it.)
Those were the days when most parishes had two priests. Fr. Howley was Pastor about as long as Msgr. Ivis was at St. Mary’s. (Ahem) Your Msgr. was a dynamic fellow; but back then, I thought Fr. Howley deserved the rank, as well. What did I know? I recall a classmate of one of my brothers mentioned, years and years and years ago, his grandpa, or great uncle retired from farming, and moved to Storm Lake. After awhile, he died, and he left a piece of ground to Saint Mary’s. That story was always good for a laugh, when sitting on a bar stool sipping beer...
Merry Christmas, Times Pilot. Perhaps, some kind old fella will leave a piece of ground to your newspaper. Crazier things happen.
Bill Tiedeman, Fonda
Ever since Storm Lake has been expanding at a very fast pace, I have realized that the vegetation and plants in our town are fading. I am not writing this letter to talk about the expansion of Storm Lake. I want to talk about the value and impact of the plants in our town.
There are many different types of plants and vegetation in Storm Lake. People take them for granted and because of that they don’t realize how important they are. Plants provide the oxygen we breathe, the food we eat and they prevent soil erosion, which also helps with supporting biodiversity.
Since I’ve mentioned their effects on our society you’re probably wondering what certain types of plants do we have in Storm Lake that makes this town so mesmerizing. Some of the common names for these flowers are Coneflowers, Spiderwort, Purple Prairie Clover, Wild Geranium and ButterCups. If you’re someone who’s really interested in these certain plants you’re probably wondering what their scientific names are? Their scientific names are Echinacea purpurea, Tradescantia, Dalea purpurea, Geranium maculatum and Ranunculus.
A special place in Storm Lake that honors and takes care of their habitation is the Storm Lake Tree Museum, and the story behind those trees is that they want people to know how they are connected to historical figures such as Joan of Arc, Johnny Appleseed and Henry Wadsworth.
So now that you know the significant impact of the vegetation and plants of our town you should consider taking this up with someone in town who is willing to make a change for Storm Lake and for the better.
Sebastian Huerta, Storm Lake High School
I was fortunate to attend this year’s excellent Iowa Farmers Union convention as an associate member. Having practiced county-seat law and working for numerous farmers in Adair County for 50 years, and experiencing summer jobs on farms and at grandpa’s, I feel like my destiny was formed by all of this.
Of course, farm convention attenders talked about tariffs and consolidation. One attender, IFU board member Suzan Erem, declared these topics could be moot in a few years. Farmerless farms were on the horizon. It reminded her of the Kodak camera company.
“They planned to go digital in 10 years. They were bankrupt in two.”
John Deere has announced plans to go 100% robotic by 2030. (Bloomberg News, Jan. 6, 2025). If today’s farmers enjoy their amenity — loaded tractor cabs — compared to yesterday’s straw hats — will they look ahead to more time off… or does this sound like unemployment? Erem further declares that tomorrow’s farmers may not own their machines, and already, often cannot now self-maintain them.
Talk about change. Voluminous acres have been given over to the monocrop/CAFO factory farm business model since year 2000. Massive consolidation. Intensive cropping and polluted runoff. Massive loss of rural youth and community vitality. Massive exports of ag income and equity to urban places.
Admit it or not, the farm sector dwells in the political economy because its members are often at loss to manage production from year to year, to respond profitably to market trends.
So, will rural folks advocate vigorously for USDA policies that stabilize the family-scale farmer, that incentivize robust land and water stewardship? Without a major change in programming, we’ll just go on with policies that affect a mere handful of wealthy and powerful interests — mostly anchored in non-rural places — that are buying out what’s left of independent hands-on farmers.
We might consider a farm bill that features retooled parity mechanisms reflective of those formed up in the great depression era by Adair County native Henry A. Wallace, part of FDR’s inner circle and his eventual Vice President. Wallace’s supply management/price support policies boosted the farmer share of the U.S. Food Dollar to 50 cents (1950). Regrettably, Big Ag interests intervened thereafter with slogans like “feeding the world,” simply a cover for corporate profiteering. The farmer food dollar share has shrunk now to 15 cents.
Vibrant rural communities? They won’t show on our horizon without standing firm for them, for policy changes that bolster local prosperity.
Wendell Berry reminds us that “without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice.”
Jay Howe, Greenfield
Corporate town leadership with a few peanuts. Tyson Foods, you donate $500 to the Storm Lake Mr. Goodfellow fund in a great time of need. Get your picture in the paper. Should be a picture in the paper of every $25 and $50 donator in the local paper, too. Goodfellow has been around much longer than Tyson.
Remember this Christmas season folks the story of the widow giving everything she had is found in Mark 12:41-44 and Luke 21:1-4. In these passages, Jesus highlights her offering as greater than those of the wealthy because she gave all she had to live on, demonstrating true sacrifice and devotion.
Cliff Moldovan, Altoona
The dirty open secret of the $1 billion Minnesota Somali welfare fraud was well known for sometime. The Minneapolis and Minnesota Democratic officials were reluctant to act because without the Somali vote, Democrats may have had trouble winning elections in Minneapolis and Minnesota. That of course takes precedence over dealing with fraud.
But that fraud is just the tip of the iceberg. Would it seem logical that only the Somalis are good at welfare fraud?
The sacrosanct Obamacare is another case in point. The enhanced subsidies were to expire at the end of the pandemic, which has been over for sometime. But Democrats don’t want them to expire. Besides an inducement for more fraud, they have “spurred workers to ditch employee coverage for heavily subsidized Obamacare plans that raise costs for taxpayers.”
A Republican plan would let small employers “unite to sponsor group health plans. These plans would reduce premiums by expanding risk pools and give more leverage with insurers.”
Another option would let employers make tax-free payments for employees to buy their own health insurance in lieu of a group plan.
There are a number of other proposals that should be implemented, given that millions of people have underreported their incomes to qualify for larger subsidies, while brokers enroll people in plans to earn bigger commissions.
To show you how disinterested Democrats are in reducing fraud, they want to rescind such antifraud reforms such as requiring minimum $5 premium payments if people don’t actively re-enroll!
According to the Wall Street Journal, our country’s “real per-capital gross domestic product grew by 142% from 1974-2024. More than two thirds of U.S.households have inflation-adjusted incomes today that would put them in the top 20% of households in 1967.”
Even with that broad based growth, real federal welfare spending has soared by 765%, more than twice as fast as total spending, now costing $1.4 trillion annually.
A big part of the problem is that the government doesn’t count any refundable tax credits or benefits not paid in cash as income to the recipients.
An example given is a single parent with two school age children earning $11,000 annually. That family would qualify for refundable child tax credits, earned income tax credits, food stamps, housing subsidies, utility bill subsidies, Medicaid, free school meals and temporary assistance for needy families.
All this would put the families income at $64,128, or 254% of the poverty level.
This is an absurd waste of increasingly scarce resources! If the government would simply give every poor family in America enough money to raise its income above the official poverty level it would cost $240 billion-a potential savings of over $1 trillion.
Eliminating welfare fraud and welfare reform should not be a partisan issue. It is a necessity.
Vic Massara, Omaha, Neb.
The President’s Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, recently told “Vanity Fair” that her boss governs with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”
This can be taken to mean he believes he is so talented he can accomplish anything. Or he believes he has unlimited power to rule however he sees fit, or perhaps both.
The part about being super talented does not seem well substantiated by reality given the President’s limited success in establishing world peace and his management philosophy of just firing people.
The second part about being an absolute dictator has found some success given No. 47’s announced intention to act like a dictator on “day one,” his manhandling of the Constitution, and his clear statement made in August 2025 during a video-taped cabinet meeting, “I can do whatever I wanna do. I’m the President.”
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross, Utah
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