opinion

Occasionally I come up with so many ideas for an opinion column that it's hard to pick one over another. When that happens I can usually find a common thread among the issues that I can meld together into a coherent piece. But that's not going to work today.

The Crow Wing County ordinance change process requires a public comment period. The Crow Wing commissioners should take good note of the quality of many of these written comments and take less note of the quantity of the written comments. This is an electronic/digital communications...

I had a letter in the April 5 Echo Journal with the newspaper's policy of 300 words. I came up short of what I intended to accomplish. This is a continuation. My main point was the government's overlook of 18- to 20-year-old military personnel. With that in mind, there are new government...

Kerfuffle - a British slang word that means "squabble" or "scuffle." Such a perfect word for what seems to be happening currently in Pequot Lakes regarding Trailside Park. Some background is appropriate. After the March city council meeting, my husband and I took a long-planned, three-week...

While energy and fuel are most often cited as reasons for the Line 3 replacement project, petroleum byproducts are another critical need. I can speak to that personally. Last year my 5-year-old son had two seizures after coming home from kindergarten. When I arrived from work, the...

Donald Trump is struggling wildly trying to keep his head above water in our White House. The floods he's battling are of his own making; he keeps blowing up dams, creating Johnstown-like floods for himself, mirroring his six bankruptcies and 3,500 lawsuits. It's his nature. The president's...

Mr. Uppgaard from Pequot Lakes should educate himself on the history of our country and the Constitution. He would learn that first and foremost we are a constitutional republic, not a democracy. He would also learn that our founding fathers provided a means to change things if we...

The manila file folder was stuck in alongside some of my old trip journals on a bookshelf. "What's this?" I thought. I pulled it out and opened it up the other day. Inside were, among other things, a couple of sheets of notebook paper with my handwriting on them. "Exercise No. 9,"...

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty recently announced his candidacy for governor again. He was our governor for eight years, ending just eight years ago. He was a very negative governor then, and there is no reason to believe he'll be any better now. Pawlenty made a feeble attempt at the presidency...

Baby boomers remember it as a dance craze. Like the shing-a-ling and the boogaloo, it was real-life drama out on the dance floor, if you could dig it. Today, it's back - with a new twist. You've seen their theatrics, heard them, watched them in action, these nouveau social dance artists,...