Opinion

During the past four years as the economy has tanked, jobs have disappeared, and  everyone has had to tighten their belts, Marion County has fared far better than  many other communities.

The assistance provided by Frankfort --  the Governors' Office, Department for  Local Government, and our legislators has been extremely beneficial to the citizens  of Marion County.

Election Day 2011 is just around the corner. If you are registered to vote, please go to the polls Nov. 8 to give your input about who should lead our state for the next four years.

I could write about the latest opinion polls, but frankly, I've never really liked the horse-race aspect of election coverage. Polls have been used to justify excluding (and even more rarely, including) candidates in debates, which I think is a poor criteria (but that's another column).

With all the debate in this country about immigration reform and immigrants needing to learn English, I would like to address the language of another group that is really difficult to grasp.

The language of career, professional politicians is just beyond me. I’m glad that I’m a country, hayseed journalist who interviews real people who can answer a question, in plain, everyday English that even a fifth-grader can understand.

By Linda Ireland

Landmark News Service

I got a flu shot last week. It didn’t hurt and I got a nice booklet of coupons for my trouble.

It seems that getting an annual vaccination for a variety of ills has turned routine, something we take for granted. One local pharmacy will even bring the shots to your workplace.

Dennis George made an open records request of the Lebanon Tourist and Convention Commission on Sept. 23. As of Oct. 20, he had not received the records he requested.

That is unacceptable.

People like being scared.

Not all the time, but with certain safeguards in place, people enjoy a good startle.

That's why roller coasters and horror films remain popular. They give us a chance to experience something spooky without any serious risk of real physical harm, assuming the rides are inspected and regularly maintained.

With Halloween fast approaching, we'll see plenty of ghouls, ghosts and goblins roaming the streets.

Perioperative nursing is a specialized area of nursing practice. The perioperative registered nurse works in collaboration with other healthcare professionals, which may include the surgeon, anesthesia provider, surgical assistant, and other assistive personnel. The perioperative registered nurse provides nursing care to surgical patients, preoperatively, intraoperatively, and postoperatively, often in the role of circulating registered nurse. 

Taking photos of tragic events is not something I enjoy nor is it something I take lightly. 

At my first full-time newspaper job, one of the first accidents I covered involved a car that ran off the side of the road and flipped over. The parents, who were wearing seat belts, survived. The children, who were not belted, were thrown from the vehicle and killed.

Despite all the doomsayers out there writing obituaries for the nation’s newspaper industry, 150 million Americans - two out of three adults - read a local newspaper last week.

Newspaper Association of America research from 2011 by Scarborough USA indicates almost 70 percent of your neighbors read either a printed newspaper or its online counterpart within the past seven days.

How could that be?