After years of sitting in the back of meeting rooms, I have learned that, during any public meeting, there is one surefire comment that will come up. At some point, one of our elected leaders, or someone with business before the body, will turn to me and say, “That is off the record”.

Forgive me if I’m feeling a little confused (regular readers of this column will probably say, “What’s new?”) but aren’t we in a national debt crisis? Our national debt has ballooned to nearly thirty- seven- trillion dollars in recent years, thanks in large part to spending during the COVID-19 pandemic to assure that businesses didn’t close and workers could still feed their families and pay the bills. The debt is why, supposedly, we allowed a team of twenty-somethings with no government experience called the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE to take a meat cleaver to federal agencies.

Anymore, having high-speed internet at your home, farm, or business has become as important as having electricity. You run a business and have a website? You need high-speed internet.

Early last week, the humidity started to spike, and it got hot in the Cornhusker State. While sweating out the dog days of summer, your local newspaper publisher got a unique craving: watermelon.

This is probably speaking to the choir, because if you’re reading this, you already believe that maintaining a healthy media—with fact-checking editors instead of conspiracy spreading folks in pajama pants—is really important.

Western Nebraska rocks, or at least it is full of them. That is one of the many realizations that I had over the past week, as my service on the Nebraska Press Association Board of Directors took me west, to Bridgeport and the Nebraska Panhandle, for a couple of days.

Back in the day, when I worked the full-service island at the Palmer Service Center in the summer, there were only a couple of rules. I didn’t know the first thing about cars—I still don’t, if I am being completely honest—and I was a terrible window washer.

We appear to be done bombing Iran, and to be back to helping Ukraine repel invaders from Russia. Plus, it looks like the trade war we started is going to raise our cost of buying coffee from Brazil and beer from Mexico.

In case you are curious, I spend a lot of time on the golf course. Oddly though, it has been years since I last touched a club.