My friends out here in Washington are amazed at the outsized influence a small, aging, largely small town and rural state like Iowa can hold over the eventual selection of a president of the United States. 

Dave Ostert enjoyed a happy end to his new beginning.

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It’s always exciting to offer patrons something for which there is a need. 

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In the past few weeks, we have had over 10 snow days, half days, and two-hour delays. Everyone loves a good snow day, but not 10! 

A call here, a free throw there, or even just a smidge of favorable spin on the ball.

Words. Why do they have to be so complicated sometimes? Maybe it’s because, in a single issue of the Maquoketa Sentinel-Press, if you read every story, you could have consumed 23,646 of them. Even more if you read all the ads (which I hope you did!). 

The last few weeks showed us what a pretty tough winter looks like. You didn’t need to read a newspaper or check Facebook to learn that from me. 

The calendar shows at last we’re closing in on March. Could that mean that signs of spring from this endless winter may be on the way?

Community leaders always prefer to see the glass as half full instead of dwelling on trends and policies beyond their control that could easily produce anxiety — or ulcers.

It was Valentine’s Day 29 years ago, and I was crawling along at a snail’s pace in my 1979, rear-wheel drive Buick Regal during the evening rush hour on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. 

— Michael Bugeja’s column was originally published in the Des Moines Register on Jan. 23. He is author of “Living Media Ethics” and “Interpersonal Divide in the Age of the Machine.” 

Door-to-door peddlers are something I associate with the milder seasons of spring and summer. So I felt pretty surprised to hear a Clinton woman’s complaint of losing over $10,000 to a crew of door-to-door driveway pavers in December 2018. But it happened. Perhaps the milder-than-normal Dece…

On the morning of Aug. 31, shortly after 8:30, a 12-year-old boy pulled out a gun in his seventh-grade classroom in Eldridge, a community south of DeWitt.

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We have jumped into 2019 with both feet here at the library. 

Go into almost any supermarket, pharmacy, convenience store, or other “big box” location, and it is hard not to see the wide variety of gift cards and reload cards offered for sale. A lot of the time, they appear on the endcaps, or the ends of the aisles. 

One of the biggest contrasts in public access to state and local governments in Iowa came into focus last week, and Iowans should be concerned by what occurred.

Working in mental health, I hear stories of trauma every day. Sometimes they’re told with a sense of ease, an event that happened long ago and has been healed and scarred. Other times they’re told with tears streaming and shakiness in each word — an incident they may be verbally expressing f…

— Mayor Don Schwenker delivered this state of the city speech to the Maquoketa City Council Monday evening.

Editor: 

On his graduation from the University of Northern Iowa in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in management, Joe Otting faced a job choice. The Maquoketa native weighed an offer from Coca-Cola to move to Atlanta and go to work for $24,000 a year with a car provided. Another offer came from Bank of…

Anyone who reads more than a few of my columns knows I harp repeatedly on scammers who pressure people to pay for scams using money wiring services, such as Western Union and Moneygram. Anybody in the consumer protection business knew for decades that wiring money is a favorite payment metho…

The weekend before Christmas I had the chance to return to my hometown in Northwest Indiana to celebrate with my five siblings. I keep in touch with all of them regularly, but with one of my sisters living overseas with her family and another living in North Carolina, it’s not often that we …

Happy New Year! 

The true definition of a hero is different for everyone. Big or small, acts of heroism can be seen all throughout everyday life. 

Disclaimer: This article contains sensitive information about Santa Claus that may be disturbing to some readers, especially if Santa is not your parents sneaking to the tree in the middle of the night. If you are under the age of nine, please flip to sports or the sudoku puzzle. Reader disc…