Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
Reliable, Trustworthy Reporting, Capturing The Heartbeat Of Our Community
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Ekram Saleh sat in a classroom, surrounded by immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Sudan. They listened as the county's election commissioner talked about voting. Here's how you can register, the commissioner said. Here's who represents your city council district. And also – Hall County needs poll workers to run every election. Saleh was then a brand-new U.S. citizen, a Sudanese native who didn't know she could serve her new country by being a poll worker. The next day, she went straight to t...
District Judge Mark Johnson will retire after a law career spanning more than four decades. The Nebraska Supreme Court recently announced Johnson's retirement, which is effective Jan. 15. In his retirement announcement to Gov. Jim Pillen, Johnson said, "It has been a distinct honor and privilege to have served as district judge of the Seventh Judicial of the State of Nebraska since April 24, 2013." The judge thanked courthouse staff for their "help, humor and assistance every day in such a...
Gail Rock credits an unusual collaborator that inspired a 1970s holiday season staple and launched her career as an author: a mouse. The mouse, which scurried atop the stove in a friend's home, triggered a series of events that birthed "The House Without a Christmas Tree," a television movie that aired each Christmas season on CBS from 1972 to 1977. It eventually became a novel, written by Rock, and led to several TV movie spinoffs. The story centers on a young girl who longs for a Christmas...
While Pete Ricketts was governor, he and his parents spent serious money supporting state senators – and opposing fellow Republicans who had displeased the governor. Longtime observers say that money helped morph the Legislature, making it less independent and more partisan. In January 2017, Patrick O'Donnell entered the Nebraska State Capitol's cavernous legislative chamber, air heavy with the echo of history's fierce debates and whispered negotiations. The longtime Clerk of the Legislature s...
Three taxidermied penguins preside over Room 426 in Allwine Hall, standing atop a row of metal cabinets in the back corner. The Antarctic birds are locked in an everlasting staring contest with a stuffed hornbill whose craned neck protrudes from a bookcase holding a row of primate skulls. To the students who file into professor James Wilson's mammalogy class, these are ordinary sights. What grabs their attention on this Monday afternoon are the short stacks of paper spread neatly across the... Full story
Governor Jim Pillen led Nebraska’s trade delegation to Germany on Sunday, kicking off the second phase of the state trade mission to Europe. The mission to Germany follows three event-packed days in the Czech Republic, which concluded with a reception for University of Nebraska alumni on Saturday evening in Prague. “In the last few days, we’ve met with German companies doing business in Nebraska,” said Gov. Pillen. “We’re discussing how each company can have a greater impact in our state. Everyone we’ve met in Germany absolutely loves the peo...
Three new members – Keith White of Neligh, Bev Krutz of Orchard and Gary Arehart of Elgin – were elected to serve on the board of the Antelope County Historical Society at the organization's recent annual meeting. All three bring a strong interest in the county's history, with each having diverse experiences and interests. "We welcome these new members to our board," said Donna Hanson, Antelope County Museum executive director. "Their broad experience and love for Antelope County will go a lon...
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Center for Agricultural Profitability and Nebraska Extension will present a workshop in O’Neill for farm and ranch landowners, landlords and tenants who want to learn more about current trends in farm or ranch real estate, and best practices for managing or leasing land. “Big Questions and Innovative Solutions in Land Management” will be held from 1 to 4 p.m., Dec. 11, at the office of Nebraska Extension in Holt County, 128 N. 6th St., Suite 100. The workshop will cover topics related to Nebraska's land in...
Medicare enrollment period begins on Oct. 15, extending through Dec. 7th. Throughout this time, seniors across Greater Nebraska will receive numerous calls and letters urging them to switch to Medicare Advantage plans. While these plans often promote cost savings and added perks, the reality for patients and health care providers can be much different. Patients face delays and higher costs Unlike traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans often require prior approval for care. In fact, nearly all Medicare Advantage enrollees must get prior...
In 2020, as the country voted in and then sweated out a razor-thin presidential election, the voters of Clay County in rural south-central Nebraska participated in numbers never seen in this century. The number of potential voters living in the county had barely budged since 2016. And yet, during the 2020 election, some 507 more voters cast ballots than had in 2016 – a 16% spike. In total, some 84% of Clay County's 4,271 registered voters cast ballots, far higher than Nebraska's statewide t...
Over the years, I've covered a few elections – probably more than I'd like to remember. Back in the day, we didn't get the wall-to-wall commercials slinging mud or the daily update on what the polls say. But one thing hasn't changed – elections are maybe the most observed, double checked and overseen functions of government. Vote counting machines are double- and triple-checked. Each political party employs "poll watchers" to make sure there's no hanky panky and the boards that count and rec...
One word best defines how Megan Landes-Murphy and her husband Tom Murphy met, made career choices and launched a unique-to-Nebraska business. Sheep. Neither spent much time around the animals while growing up in northwest Wisconsin and the Omaha area, respectively. Now, they have sheep, a few chickens and two Great Pyrenees dogs named Milo and Birdie on their 12-acre ranch east of the small south-central Nebraska town of Lawrence. Two years ago, Landes-Murphy launched Kestrel Ridge Pellet Co.,...
University of Nebraska-Lincoln students Carleigh Greene, Tilden, a 2022 high school graduate of Elkhorn Valley Schools, and Riley Martensen, a 2022 graduate of Neligh-Oakdale Public Schools, have been named winners of the Schuchardt Family Scholarship for the 2024-25 academic year. Greene, the daughter of Randy Greene of Tilden and Bobbi Jenkins of Oakdale, is a junior majoring in community health and wellness in the College of Education and Human Sciences. She is a member of the CEHS Student...
Whether the luck of the Irish was with them or if a divine power intervened, emergency personnel are thankful that no fatalities or major injuries were reported in an explosion that rocked O'Neill before sunrise on Monday. At approximately 5:55 a.m., an explosion occurred in the St. Patrick's Parish Center, in the 300 block of Benton Street. KBRX Radio owner Scott Poese, of O'Neill reported flames as high as 50 to 60 feet were visible in the early-morning skies shortly after the blast occurred....
All University of Nebraska athletic venues now have full approval to sell alcohol. On Oct. 4, the Nebraska Board of Regents voted 7-1 in favor of allowing beer, wine and liquor sales at all NU athletic venues, replacing a 2022 vote that allowed alcohol sales case by case. Until today, Nebraska was the sole Big Ten school that did not sell alcohol in its football stadium. "The advantage of all 17 schools in the Big Ten doing this already is there are best practices," athletic director Troy Dannen...
The Kansas City Royals game played through the car radio as Jeff Hovden drove south on a Friday night. Jeff and his son Jack had tickets for the next day. During the drive, the broadcast team noted the strong Omaha contingent in attendance, many sporting jerseys with the name "Bohm" across the back. The next day the Hovdens experienced it in person. "It was pretty impressive," said Hovden, a Phillies fan and car wash soap salesman from Vermillion, South Dakota. The "Bohm" on the many jerseys...
With its handmade ice cream and prime location at the entrance to East Campus, the Dairy Store is a crowd favorite at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and a fitting venue for welcoming a university president. The Nebraska Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources hosted an event Sept. 19 at the Dairy Store to unveil an ice cream flavor created in honor of the new University of Nebraska-Lincoln president, Jeffery Gold. Dairy industry leaders and university partners who provide product t...
Online learning seems new, but it’s older than you think. The field’s predecessor, distance education, can be traced back centuries. From Sir Isaac Pitman, who taught shorthand by correspondence in 1840, to lectures broadcast on the radio in the early 1920s, all the way through to the early 1990s when colleges and universities took advantage of the newly minted World Wide Web and began to offer online education programs, it has evolved alongside technological advances. In those early days of the internet, online learning was an adjustment for...
Ironic, isn’t it, that a system that provides so many advantages for its citizens also provides the means of its own demise. Unlike nearly every other system of government that came before it, U.S. democracy offered its citizens individual freedom, respect and relative equality. Yes, it’s true that the founders left women and enslaved people out of their plans, but, thankfully, the nation has moved to implement the founders’ original principles as we have learned more about and moved to embrace what they actually mean. American democracy makes...
At peace. That's how Jordan Larson felt back in Lincoln after her fourth, and likely final, Olympic Games this summer. Her journey to tranquility started well before Paris, before capping an unprecedented career with the U.S. national team by winning silver, even before returning to her alma mater to help coach a championship contender. "This last two years really has been a journey of pure reflection ... of healing," Larson said at an August press conference. "I'm soaking in the essence of...
Jeffrey P. Gold, M.D., was formally installed, Sept. 5, as the ninth president of the University of Nebraska System during an academic ceremony in Lincoln. The event marked exactly 10 years to the day and hour from his year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska Medical Center in 2014 and exactly five years from his year as chancellor of the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2019. It was also the first time a presidential investiture was held at the Nebraska State Capitol. "The ceremony...
Reprinted with permission from The Elgin Review Jane Schuchardt Special to the Elgin Review Sometimes your lens into the future gets polished by local mentors. Such is the case for Jamie Thiele, Clearwater, and her robust photography business. Relaxing over a cup of coffee for a few minutes after getting her two little ones, Charlie, 7, and Landrie, 6, off to school at Summerland near Ewing, Thiele claims she's a product of her second moms, Sue Vanis, Elgin, and Kim Grossnicklaus, Neligh. Of cou...
The group of teachers had a straightforward but daunting assignment before them: How could Cody-Kilgore, a small district nestled in the Nebraska Sandhills, buck the trend of rural decline and revitalize the school? Teachers Stacey Adamson and Tracee Ford latched onto an unusual idea that started as a joke – one that grew more unusual as it progressed. What about a grocery store run by students? Now nearly two decades after the idea first surfaced, the Circle C Market – a student-run gro...
Bob Decker thought he'd get an early start on golf one morning this summer when he headed to Omaha's Steve Hogan Golf Course. Instead, he ended up providing swarms of mosquitoes their breakfast, lunch and dinner during his round at the nine-hole course. "I was slapping mosquitoes off my legs the whole time," he said. "Thus the reason for my poor score ..." Decker wasn't imagining things. Compared to last year, mosquito numbers have jumped significantly across Nebraska, nearly doubling in...
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln conferred 574 degrees during a combined graduate and undergraduate commencement ceremony Aug. 17 at Pinnacle Bank Arena. The degrees were earned by 569 graduates from 46 counties, 36 U.S. states and 60-plus Nebraska communities. Chancellor Rodney D. Bennett presided over the commencement ceremony. Alyssa Marie Moser, of Clearwater, graduated from the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, receiving a Bachelor of Science Degree in a...
