In the early 1770s, American colonists became convinced that the English Parliament intended to take away their freedoms. In fact, the Americans saw a pattern of increasing oppression and corruption all around the world. Indeed, the British were determined to bring their unruly American subjects to heel and b...

I can still sing the battle songs of every branch of America’s armed forces. I am also usually the only person in our crowd who, when we gather around the Christmas tree, knows the words to the second verse of just about every Christmas carol. I went to public school, had no religious education, but I’m prett...

It can be hard to believe that we have any power to change the course of climate change. Each time I get one of those soggy paper straws with my smoothie, I am reminded why we love plastic so much. How can it make any difference to use just one plastic straw? Maybe it cannot. But during this Plastic-Free July...

As an elder Baby Boomer, I want and need to apologize. I could list the various generations, but let me simplify and address my apology to all current and future-not-yet-named-generations that are dealing with or will have to deal with the consequences of my actions or, more often, my lack of actions.

I grew up believing all things are possible, born in the “land of the free” with “liberty and justice for all.” The past few months have been a huge challenge to my belief system. I won’t digress here — you read the news and listen to the broadcasts. You have personal experiences at the grocery store (you eve...

The majestic old pine near our house that I first thought was being trimmed was being cut down. Sad to see its life ending while it was still so vibrant and enjoying life. I’ve been reading about how much we never knew about the plant world, that trees and other growing things are connected through their root...

Which came first? Does feeling good cause your smile or does smiling make you feel good? Sometimes, when walking in the park, I’ll feel so good to be out there with the cows and birds on foggy spring mornings that I’ll break out in a smile, which I did six times a few days ago. The next day I didn’t smile at ...

I learned two surprising things in putting together this special July 4th issue of Senior News on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The first concerned Betsy Ross, who — as everybody knows — sewed the first American flag. Or did she?

It’s America’s birthday, and although it is quite old, my friends and I have been around for about one-third of its entire existence! Which makes us older in human years than the country is in nation-state years. Born at the conclusion of World War II, we experienced the best that America had to offer in her ...

To the Editor: Many of us seniors, especially in this rural area that is so prone to power outages, depend on our landlines. In some areas that is the only reliable form of telephonic communication. As you probably remember, AT& T made an effort a couple of years ago to get rid of its landlines, but had to pu...

My father was only high school-educated, but he was an ardent student of the history of our nation who felt privileged to live in an historic city, central to the forming of our country — Philadelphia. When I was a young girl, in the 1940s and early ’50s, Dad would take me on Sundays by bus (we never owned a ...

For many older adults living in Humboldt County’s outlying communities, accessing nutritious meals and taking part in social opportunities can be challenging. Limited transportation options, long travel distances and a lack of nearby services can leave rural seniors at greater risk of food insecurity, social ...

We asked Senior News readers and others for their quick thoughts on this 4th of July. Here are some of the responses.

What America means to me, in the words of some of our Founding Fathers, all signatories to the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

As we celebrate the 4th of July and the United States’ 250th birthday, I’m trying to remember if I was raised to be patriotic as a child. My recollection is like Arthur Krystal’s in a recent New Yorker magazine: “I did not grow up loving America — not because I thought it didn’t deserve love but because I did...

One of my great-great-greats was Benedict Arnold, which always made me feel a little sheepish about the quality of my inherited family patriotism. But my father’s family was longtime Yankee stock that had infested Western Massachusetts back to the early 1700s — slate headstones carved with the names of variou...

Like most kids growing up in the ’50s, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in class and sang “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful” in school assemblies. I was conditioned to believe that the United States was the best country — superior to any other because of our democracy, equality an...

When we were little, Mom read stories to us kids at bedtime and told stories of various events from her childhood. She was a keen observer of the human condition and told us about local happenings in our neighborhood and the little village of McFarland, Wisconsin, where we grew up.

Independence Day is always a hot time in the throes of summer, especially here in Arkansas. But I remember an especially “hot” celebration at War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock on July 6, 1991, as a huge shower of glowing orange embers brought a spectacular ending to a patriotic celebration.

The 56th annual Wildwood Days takes over Rio Dell July 30-Aug. 2, with parades, cookoffs, softball, bocce, firefighter competitions, a soapbox derby and much more. Started in 1970, the festival is a celebration of small-town summer in Humboldt County. Thursday, July 30, features the BBQ competition on the Rio...