Music of ’60s, ’70s still relevant today

March 30, 2023

Someone said, “Life’s a song.” The chorus is the part that repeats itself. More than that, time has a way of digging up the past and making it shine like a brand-new diamond. I have always loved music for inspiration and enjoyment. Does anyone remember Quicksilver Messenger Service? Somehow their music is more relevant today than it ever was back in the late ’60s and early ’70s. Most strikingly, one of the verses in the song “What About Me?” says, “I feel like a stranger in the land where I was born.” Man, does that shoe fit. “You poisoned my sweet water”… ...

What does the evidence show?

March 21, 2023

Is the United States more violent? If you watch the news and political ads, you would likely answer yes, but what does the evidence say? My sources are FBI records, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bureau of Justice Statistics as part of the Census Bureau’s annual National Crime Victimization Survey. In these sources, the rate of violent victimization dropped from 79.8 per 1,000 in 1993 to 16.5 per 1,000 in 2021. The findings measure rape, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault and simple assault. Between 2012 and 2021, this rate fell 9.6 cases per 1,000. In ...

IM campus best if centralized

March 17, 2023

EDITOR: The Centralized Campus is the new and most effective model in education today nationally. As an educator for more than 30 years with experience as a classroom teacher, school counselor, track/swim coach, college instructor and most recently coordinator of the Dickinson-Iron Great Start Collaborative and the Imagination Factory Children’s Museum, I wholeheartedly believe in the Centralized Campus model for our community. The following rationale supports implementation of a future Iron Mountain Public School Centralized Campus for all students — — Cross-age mentoring ...

Sobering words on socialism

March 16, 2023

EDITOR: This was Russia’s Khruschev’s prediction about the U.S. in 1959. Sobering words. Where do YOU think we stand? “Your children’s children will live under Communism. You Americans are so gullible. No, you won’t accept it outright, but we’ll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you finally wake up and find you’re ready, you already have Communism.” “We will not have to fight you. We will so weaken your economy until you will fall like overripe fruit into our hands. The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to ...

Opposed to IM’s $16.9M plan for school projects

March 10, 2023

Not everyone receives the daily newspaper, so they are not aware of what the Iron Mountain School Board has in store for us. On Monday, Feb. 20, the Iron Mountain City Council met at 6 p.m. at Iron Mountain City Hall and I attended. They were patient with me and showed interest in my bringing up the Central School article and my concern regarding our ability to finance general obligation bonds of up to $16.93 million for a host of projects. This would include demolishing Central School, which has an overhead walkway to the Children’s Museum. Would removing the walkway damage the ...

Time to let ‘sun shine through’

March 7, 2023

Here we are in 2023, with some of us STILL hating each other for the color of the skin we happen to be born in or for the religion we happen to follow or the place our ancestors or ourselves may have come from. And still hating each other for myriad other reasons that, if we are asked, we cannot even give an answer to that makes any actual sense. That is pretty sad. And it is pretty stupid. That, incidentally, is not how America is supposed to work and it is not how America does work for about 70% of the people. And even among the 70%, we passively sit by while a bunch of do-nothings ...