Opinion

GUEST COLUMN, Greg Doering, Kansas Farm Bureau

It’s hard to see a yellow school bus and not think about all the hours of my childhood spent sitting on one of those hard seats with a stiff back. I hope the modern versions have a little more comfort than the utilitarian transportation I had to ride uphill both ways.

From the outside, they don’t look much different now that the calendar has turned to September and the wheels on the buses are going around and around every day.

GUEST COLUMN, J. Basil Dannebohm

I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle — from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.

It’s important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They’re notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.

L&T Publisher Earl Watt

There’s no doubt that I’ve made a post or two on social media I should have edited.

We’ve all said or done something that we’ve regretted, but social media makes it so much easier.

I have debates online with those who see the world differently than I see it, and I don’t have a problem conversing with the other minded.

But it can become fatiguing to constantly rehash the same old issues over and over again, and that can sometimes lead to a comment that isn’t as kind as it should be.

THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

My niece Isabelle is leaving for Argentina, and I don’t know how I’m going to stand it.

Isabelle is an adult, although I don’t know how that is possible, because I remember clearly the day she was born, on an extraordinarily cold day 22 years ago, and surely, I can’t be that old. I arrived at the hospital with a bouquet of flowers and a Mylar balloon that had gone flat because it could not stay inflated at below-zero temperatures. But Isabelle thrived.

I like to think that I have a lot in common with Isabelle, but this is wishful thinking, because Isabelle is a more capable version of me than I could ever be.