Columns

I have moved on in life and will soon no longer be the journalist at EllwoodCity.org. This is goodbye. Rather than having an abrupt end date, I will more or less fade out while the next journalist moves in and starts another chapter of Ellwoodian adventures. To answer questions about what I’m doing next: I have a position with a company that does a thing somewhere. Rather than say much, I have included links of articles I wrote that are important to me. A Farewell to Carmike Plaza (Lots of memories going to this theater) Ellwood’s Petrak is the Swimming…

This spring I’ve had the pleasure to be a journalist in a town with two WIAL championship teams: Riverside baseball and Ellwood softball. In fact, since 2001, these two schools have collected an impressive amount of combined titles* through their four varsity ball teams. I’m not a sports fan to any extent. I’ve watched one professional sports game on television, but even I can’t be unaffected by the excitement of the season, and I hope to be writing articles for each team in the coming days. The degree of success the teams have had is astounding. Riverside won shut outs…

Congratulations to Ellwood, Riverside and other local seniors! One chapter of your life is over and another is beginning or insert your own generic motivational statement. A generalized amount of you will be attending a four-year accredited institute of higher education. Good for you! Numerous graphs that bedazzle Lincoln High School halls indicate people with bachelor’s degrees earn more than people with only high school diplomas. Here’s a bar graph and a line graph you can look at right now. Unfortunately, college is a costly proposition. From 1978 to 2008, the cost of tuition has increased at a much higher…

In last week’s column, I mentioned one of my primary sources of knowledge is works by accredited academics, so I’ll elaborate slightly. Generally, when people use a word in the correct context, they mean the accepted definition of that word. That’s how language works. For example, “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” is a single-volume history of the American Civil War written by James McPherson, the Professor Emritus of American History at Princeton University. I can read the book with confidence that it will have an accurate account of the American Civil War. On another level, “The Civil War: A Narrative”…

The presidential election season is approaching halftime, when there will be a slight break before the respective party nominees launch full fledged attacks against each other. I’m already burnt out. Normally, I don’t watch or read the news beyond the bare minimum of knowing what major events are going on around the world. Back when I used to follow the news, I came to the conclusion that everything is simultaneously racist, not racist, good for the economy, bad for the economy, good for democracy, bad for democracy, something that everybody should be talking about, something that nobody should be talking…