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My hope by sharing these stories is that we can all get to know our community a little better. I feel thankful to have met so many amazing people in the Storm Lake area who are working hard to build better lives. They are truly remarkable, and I believe their stories deserve to be shared.
We often think we know our neighbors. But how well do we really understand the journeys that brought them here? Some stories are full of joy. Others are marked by loss and challenge. All of them can help us see each other with more understanding. It’s easy to believe the struggles we see on TV, or hear about in the news, only happen far away. But many of those same struggles affect people right here in our community.
The details in this story are changed to protect privacy, but the person is real. They might be standing next to you at the store or waiting in line for coffee. My purpose in sharing these stories is to help us connect with, and feel connected to, the people around us. After all, I believe that when we know each other’s stories, it is harder to hate or harm one another.
Our third neighbor’s story begins when our neighbor left her home country by foot at the age of four and walked to a new country. It took her and her family a month to walk to a safe country. She left her home because it was experiencing, and still is, a brutal civil war which has resulted in what has now been declared one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
She left with her family, and for the next 18 years she lived in a refugee camp. There she went to school with other refugees and lived with about 45 children in two tents. Each tent had the outside dimensions of approximately 14” x 14” and a center height of about eight feet. For 18 years this was her home; this is the place she is referring to when she shares that she is homesick. This is the environment in which she cooked for other children and taught them how to sing. This is where she made friends that she misses. This was not a permanent home though, and despite the longing she feels to be near the people who were her community, it was a hard life and still is for the many who remain.
At the time of her arrival in the United States, the federal government welcomed refugees like her, although we no longer do. She and her family found themselves resettled in Connecticut. Unfortunately, the cost of living became too much and a friend familiar with Storm Lake encouraged her to move here. So, without having visited or knowing much about the location, she moved here with her family. Here she lives in a house with her mother and both attend school. They belong to a church and have found trusted members of the community that they can ask questions, such as, “How do I respond to this letter from the government?” Or “Can you help me to fix this problem on my computer?” She, and her mother recently received new, quality shoes shoes made for the winter. Shoes that fit.
She has a job, and despite the cost of living being more affordable, finds herself still being worried about money. She knows she needs to save, and does her best to try to do so, but along with day-to-day expenses, she must pay back the United States government for the cost of her transportation here. This is a large expense and is required of all who resettled to the United States.
She is so grateful to be here, although she considers herself to still be settling into the Storm Lake community and adjusting to the culture of the United States. For example, even in Storm Lake she is aware of how people treat her because she is living meagerly. Yet, to her, so many around her have such abundance. She has tried many new foods and continues to learn all about driving in the winter. Life is hard here, but easy compared to the refugee camp.
Her goal is to create a better life for herself and her family through education. She aspires to work in the healthcare industry one day and is currently making progress toward her high school diploma.
She is our neighbor.
Sarah E. Schoper, Storm Lake
During this 2025 holiday season, millions of children and ordinary plain folks, just like me, will make wishes for items to please their heart’s desire. For children, such wishes may simply extend mainly to toys, ponies, games, mobile phones and other reasonably, low-cost items. However, for some plain MAGA/Republican folks, but certainly not me, they will desire a $10,000 guitar, or a $100,000 watch, or a pair of $399 gold sneakers, or a $100 Trump silver coin, or a $17 Trump doll, or a $30 whiskey glass, or a $25 coffee mug, or crypto meme coins, or... the list of desires... there is no end —all items branded and sold at Trump’s online store/crypto company by a moron, who returned to the White House in 2025.
In addition to Trump’s array of highly-priced, branded-gifts available for purchase this holiday season, his return to the White House has thus fulfilled a second and final wish for his plain MAGA/Republican folk supporters: a wish which began in 2024 and is now complete. Know what the final wish is?
H.L. Mencken knew the answer, because he once told us, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
So, for all the plain MAGA/Republican folks, but definitely not me, who cast their ballot for the moron in 2024, your final heart’s desire has been granted. Now, as a result of receiving your final wish, you should enjoy your over-priced Trump-branded gifts. In addition, now fully enjoy the Trump-applied tariffs. Now, enjoy the Trump-inspired inflated food and energy prices. Now, enjoy Republican-induced higher health insurance premiums. Now, enjoy watching innocent citizens being arrested by ICE/Border Patrol agents. Now, enjoy the unlawful military killings in the Caribbean. Now, enjoy crumbling and dysfunctional departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, the Interior, Justice, Labor, State, Transportation, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. Now, plain MAGA/Republican folks, enjoy your happy holidays?
John M. Mishler, Harpswell, Maine
Western civilization has seen the MAGA movement before, with its systematic discrimination based on financial power, illegitimate political power, faulty science, religious chauvinism, racism, and sexism.
In the Middle East today, Israel uses biblical “chosen people” ideology to discriminate against and make perpetual war against Palestinians.
Some decades ago in South Africa, MAGA was known as apartheid, which was based on white supremacy. MAGA is taking the same approach against brown-skinned Hispanics today.
During World War II, MAGA was manifest in Japanese internment camps in America and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Germany.
At the turn of the twentieth century in America, MAGA sexist discriminatory thinking was responsible for spawning the Women’s Voting Rights movement.
In the late 1800s, MAGA was defined by “Robber Baron” monopolism and anti-unionism.
In the post-Civil War south, MAGA law knew a complementary system called Jim Crow law limiting black civil rights relating to property and education.
In early American history, MAGA was called Manifest Destiny, which was used to isolate Native Americans on the reservation.
Today, MAGA is trashing scientific evidence and due process in public affairs based on racist, sexist, and force-based impulses like these earlier ones in history.
Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross, Utah
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