Today's Opinions

There is a sesne today that I shouldn’t be here. I should be in the suburbs of Denver, helping to lay to rest a man who in many ways made me whatever success I have been in this world, a man I call friend.
Just a week ago, Tom Patterson lay quietly in an ICU in California, tubes and machines breathing for him. Breathing long had been Tom’s downfall, brought on by a 15-year battle with a lung-eating disease called scleroderma.

Sometime over the years the Shelby County Fair evolved into a pageant of pageants.

What began in 1842 as a celebration of farm life and livestock has evolved in 2012 to be a celebration of our children on display like a lot of that livestock, and we venture there are more of the former than the latter entered at the fair.

What for decades was a baby show and a beauty contest for young women now has expanded into a days-long, multi-age-group competition among girls and boys, which would beg the question about whether we have taken this too far.

I was first paid for my writing when I was 13 years old. The Shelby Newsadvertised for "correspondents" to cover activities at the eight local junior high schools. Because the major activities were sports-related, a phone call and my immediate hiring became an introduction to the world of print journalism.

It was the best call I ever made, not only because I would be paid the princely sum of 10 cents for every column inch of information I contributed, but it set me off on a career path that continues a half-century to this day.