“Where is the best place in town to eat?” That was the question that I heard multiple times late last week, as I hung around the storage bay of my office in downtown St. Paul.

“You should be allowed to say outrageous things.” “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech.

For a lot of people, if you were asked to think about the year 2010, there is a good chance that a litany of headline-making events would come to the forefront of your mind. Haiti was devastated by an earthquake just a handful of days into the year, Steve Jobs and Apple announced the launch of the first iPad in the spring, thirty-three Chilean miners got trapped and were miraculously rescued late in the summer, and just before Christmas, the Big 12 gave Husker fans a going- away gift we will never forget, a gut-wrenching loss to Oklahoma in the conference championship game.

Alarm bells are sounding over the lack of robust job growth in the state’s two largest cities. A recent study commissioned by the Omaha-based Aksarben Foundation indicated that job growth in Omaha and Lincoln lagged behind its peer cities, such as Sioux Falls, Des Moines, and Oklahoma City.

Growing up, on our birthdays, my siblings and I always kept a keen ear tuned to the radio in the morning. In maybe a humorous sign of the times, on our birthdays, our parents would call in to a morning show—usually Matt and Julia in the Morning on 107.7, KSYZ— and we would listen for our names to be called with the rest of the people in central Nebraska celebrating our special day.

Brace yourself Nebraskans for another year without meaningful property tax relief. That’s because the “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB) means that Nebraska will have to do without about $216 million in state income tax revenue over the next two years, and $406 million less over the next four years.

When you are a little kid, no one is smarter than your parents. You idolize them.

Over the years, I covered more than one effort by the Nebraska Legislature to redraw the boundaries of districts for state legislators and United States congressional representatives, among others, due to shifts in the state’s population.

On vacation in Colorado last week, I ran into a few Husker expats. All commented on how great the summer weather was in the mountains.

Monday morning, as I scrambled out the door and off to my first event of the week—the Arcadia Fall Festival Parade—out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the front end of my vehicle, and my heart skipped a beat.