Opinions

The Fort Scott Daily Monitor published some interesting statistics related to the cattle business in their Nov. 21, 1869, edition. The information illustrates why the demand for beef in the eastern United States drew so many Texas cattl up the long trail to the cattle depots along Kansas railroads.

Do looks really matter? This topic is better suited to philosophers, but a series of observations from my trip to the Baltics earlier this year with Kansas Farm Bureau’s Casten Fellows Program has had me questioning my belief that if something works, it does not matter if it looks good.

Everyone agrees. We need to recruit more young people to our communities. They are the future entrepreneurs, volunteers, homeowners, school enrollments, and the desperately needed succession plans we need for our baby boomers who own 60 percent of the businesses in Kansas.

What about the babies?It seems media coverage of the coronavirus is unrelenting, including recent coverage by various sources that the “U.S. death toll from COVID-19 eclipsed 700,000.

“If you want to keep your team, pay them what they’re worth,” Liz Elting, contributor to Forbes Women.I ran across this sentence reading an article about worker shortages. It reminded me of the recent Board of Education, BOE, meeting held Nov. 8.

In a few short days we will all sit down and celebrate Thanksgiving — the holiday that is meant for us to reflect and decide what it is for which we are thankful. We have a lot to be thankful for in this great nation, not the least of which is our farms and ranches.

I always enjoy receiving suggestions from readers because it means they want the I-R to be better — the same as all of us who work at the newspaper.

While perusing through books at an estate sale, a friend found a book about celebrated Civil War nurse Mother Bickerdyke. A passage from “Mother Bickerdyke and The Soldiers” described the defense of Corinth, Ms., from Oct. 3 and 4, 1862.

On Nov. 11, 1918, Ralph Lindsey wrote from his hospital bed in France “Armistice signed at 11 o’clock. Grand celebration all over France. War is at last over and I am still alive!

Early in 1864 the United States Army organized the 1st Volunteer Infantry, a regiment of Confederate prisoners of war mustered into service. The former rebels were pardoned and “galvanized” after taking the oath of allegiance to the United States. Richard W.