Category: Special Column

Palestine needs the warmth of our collective action

I write to you kindled by the love of our community and the Palestinian people.

I am tired of all the caveats, the conditional statements, the analogies. I believe we are suffering from a crisis of imagination in a situation that actually does not require much. It may sound counterintuitive amidst a discourse that encourages you to put yourself in Palestinians’ shoes, asks you to imagine if it was your family or friends or neighbors who were being slaughtered, would have you use a thousand “what if” statements instead of looking at what’s really going on. It’s a cheap liberal tactic to get us to care about others only in terms of how much we care about ourselves and our loved ones.

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Editor-in-Chief’s Column: How our 2023 has gone so far, on just deciding to do the news well

I don’t say this to be dramatic, but 2023 has been the SICKEST season of my life ever. To be clear, I don’t mean that in the “that’s sick, bro” way, I mean that in the cold and flu season way and in the bronchitis/COVID-19/constant earache way. 
On a slightly more uplifting and inspirational note, being sick on repeat did uncover a fun and invigorating experience — The Newsroom. Not ours, the fictional broadcast newsroom from the HBO original The Newsroom. 

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The (not so) Plain and Simple Correspondent: Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom

In the Roman pantheon, Minerva was the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade and strategy. Gracious! It boggles the mind that even a goddess could possibly incorporate so many sterling qualities. As it happens, there is a human being who comes close. She lives at Taliesin – “Shining Brow”, named for the famous Welsh bard – and is in her 99th year. The years have robbed her of easy mobility but left her mind intact. Still sharp as a razor, she is almost the last of the apprentices who knew Frank Lloyd Wright personally, as he gathered around himself what was called the Fellowship, the brainchild of the last Mrs. Wright. It was composed mostly of very young people who subscribed to his philosophy of Natural Architecture. They paid to come learn how to practice it and be a part of the close-knit, sometimes competitive circle that basked in his aura, sat at his knee.

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Valley Sentinel launches Impulse Initiative

Valley Sentinel lends platform in print and online to foster community ideas

We are pleased to announce the (soft) launch of Valley Sentinel’s Impulse Initiative. It has always been our goal to build community and over the past year plus we’ve been talking to area residents every day about their wants, hopes and dreams for the community. We’ve asked many times in print what ideas you had for the community and how we go about doing them. This initiative is a culmination of those things.

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EDITORIAL: River Valley School Board needs to formally charter work group, equity is too important not to

As covered in the March 11 River Valley School Board story, board member Sara Young proposed an ‘Equity and Understanding Work Group’, composed of teachers, administrators, a community representative and a parent, who would be charged with admirable equity, diversity and inclusion tasks, including proposing district policy.

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Special Column: Your responses to River Valley Resolutions

For the past month we’ve asked the community to share with us some ideas they have to better the community. We asked to figure out the services/offerings/events, etc. that an area would need to have to want to settle down there. We asked what some things are that every community should offer its residents? Not just now during COVID, but in normal times too. What things represent that concept of community? Some things you’d wish your hometown had?

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