As I type this, the Dickinson County News office is quiet enough to hear a clock tick away its seconds from a spot on the wall. Highlighters and correction tape weigh down a random pile of Post-It notes. Interviews are still trapped in a cassette tape recorder the size of a Buick, and the scattered piles of paper on my desktop are an "opportunity for improvement."...

If you attended high school in Spencer between the years of 1969 and 1992, you probably didn't get through your freshman year without a little time with Nellie "Nell" Alderman. The fiery pastor's daughter from North Dakota taught civics, and her classroom lessons took students to the 13 Colonies and back...

I've been with the Dickinson County News since the start of 2010. There's never been a week when we've left out the opinion page. Sometimes, when we get a bumper crop of commentary, we'll even add a second page. That's not a wrinkle I brought to the table, by the way. I'm sure the uninterrupted string of opinion pages goes back much farther than my arrival...

I wish I could still be mad at Colin Kaepernick, the San Francisco 49er who took a knee during national anthems in 2016 and couldn't find a roster spot anywhere in 2017. I wanted the quarterback to find another form of peaceful protest to convey the messages of social injustice and police misconduct...

I'm familiar with a regional lawmaker who recently concluded an update to constituents with the following: "The media and many others continue to criticize the governor and the response taken by the state of Iowa," the update said. "The facts tell a story that Iowa is on the way to recovery."...

We appreciate hearing from readers and, as a human being in a judgement-call industry, I don't expect inbox feedback to come with rose petals and candlelight. Sure enough, on Monday a reader asked us to put less emphasis on arrest or court reporting and focus more on entrepreneurs and neighbors helping neighbors. It's harder to snoop around the community and "find people doing something right," he told me...

PROJECTS PAVE THE WAY It's impossible to wrap up the events of the last decade without a look into what's ahead in the Iowa Great Lakes. Dickinson County was one of 30 counties in Iowa to show growth over the past decade and residents saw changes along the area's roads and highways...

Crime scenes, courtrooms marked the past decade The top story of 2010 centered on "Operation Broken Arrow," a law enforcement effort to break up a massive drug trafficking operation in the Iowa Great Lakes...

The 2010s were stormy and sometimes tragic The well-worn saying among Iowans is: "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes because it's sure to change."So it's no surprise strong winds, high waters and even an ice storm secure a high place as we look back at the last decade. Mother Nature didn't waste any time...

Looking back, I can see how unsure I was when first arrived as Managing Editor of the Dickinson County News. This DCN issue happens to mark the 10th anniversary of my arrival. A decade ago, I compared the experience to a bull ride. (I came from Spencer and my last story there was a bull riding event preview for the Spencer Daily Reporter.)...

Avast ye mateys! Thursday was "Talk Like a Pirate Day," so pull up a stool, ye landlubbers as I tell ye o' the great go-kart plunder of 2011. I can remember it like the smell o' a shipmate after three weeks at sea...

U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst issued a statement Tuesday encouraging Iowans to "forget Area 51 — waste at the Pentagon is out of this world." The combat veteran's point was to let Iowans know about the need to consolidate unneeded and underused warehouses in the Department of Defense...

The Oct. 31 issue of The Dickinson County News is the final edition before the election, and we do not plan to have political content on that opinion page. No one would have a chance to respond in print before the Nov. 6 votes are cast. We want to avoid that...

Imagine pulling up for some burgers and fries, when you see guys throwing hands, right in front of your eyes. That seems to have happened at McDonald's in Storm Lake, where a beef about rapping led to one big mistake...

I've been with the Dickinson County News since the start of 2010. There's never been a week when we've left out the opinion page. Sometimes, when we get a bumper crop of commentary, we'll even add a second page. That's not a wrinkle I brought to the table, by the way. I'm sure the uninterrupted string of opinion pages goes back much farther than my arrival...

President Trump experienced Sen. John McCain's withering disapproval during their shared time in Washington D.C. but he certainly wasn't alone. Congressman Steve King supported McCain during campaign stops in Iowa, but it's safe to say any alliance faded over time. King and the 2008 GOP presidential nominee from Arizona didn't agree about border and immigration policies. McCain ultimately returned to the Senate...

Marilyn Maye reminds us that a home isn't just four walls and a roof. And, she found a new one for her performances in Okoboji. "I'm thrilled to be playing the lovely Lakes Art Theatre for two nights," she recently told us, adding that she is glad the Pearson Lakes Art Center is part of the area landscape offering audiences wonderful music and entertainment...

Let’s test out a pair of statements that seem reasonable: • It’s hard to be a credible voice for national unity if you support the presence of Confederate statues in public places. • It’s hard to promote unity if you use our national anthem as a means of protest...

We hope you don't mind, but we'd like to reverse trends a bit and bring a little of the social media dialogue we see on Facebook back to the old-fashioned, black-and-white newspaper opinion page. Some comments we’ve seen recently raise a couple of issues that deserve some clarification...

Hank Williams Jr. had a pretty good gig back in 2011. Come up with a few lines to "All My Rowdy Friends Are Here on Monday Night" for ESPN's primetime football game each week. Get paid. Stay relevant. Then the country musician went on "Fox & Friends" to suggest that a Republican speaker playing golf with a Democratic president would be like "Hitler playing golf with (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu." Obama and Biden were "the enemy," he blurted in 2011.. ...