Opinion

Wakanda forever

Published by editor on Wed, 09/02/2020 - 9:04am

The king is dead.

Last Friday ended on a sad note with the announcement that actor Chadwick Boseman had died at the age of 43 after a four-year battle with cancer.

Boseman gained fame for playing historical black figures like Jackie Robinson and James Brown, but since 2016 he was best known for portraying T'Challa, the Black Panther, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In that time, Boseman was regarded as a hero both on and off-screen, positively inspiring a demographic sorely under represented in theaters and doing so with grace and humor.

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Solutions to the race problem

Published by editor on Wed, 09/02/2020 - 9:02am

Kenosha, Wisconsin is the latest scene of what would appear a senseless act of vio-lence by police. There's little to go on for us in the cheap seats but it's pretty easy to jump to the conclusion that a racist cop lost control and Jacob Blake shouldn't have tried to break up a fight.

I still contend that it is simply impossible to judge from here in Dumont or even down the street in Kenosha. Even as time passes, witnesses are re-luctant to come forward fearing reprisal from whichever side their testimony can damage.

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Postal service

Published by editor on Wed, 08/26/2020 - 10:40am

I'm still kinda mad at Twila, the former postmistress in Dumont. She knew Dawn lived right around the corner and didn't tell me about her, for a year. I thought she was my friend. Anyway, I found my true love on my own without Twila's help.

The post office has been in the news lately. Trump sup-posedly wants to limit funding. He thinks mail-in ballots can lead to corruption. The Demo-crats oppose defunding the Postal Service because, well because. There are some bigger issues here.

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Counting bats

Published by editor on Wed, 08/26/2020 - 10:38am

Once upon a time, the "Smallville" television show purportedly went to great lengths to avoid introducing their own version of Batman while the Christopher Nolan Batman movies were getting off the ground. Presumably because they didn't want audiences to be confused about there being a Bruce Wayne on television and in the theaters at the same time.

Boy how things change.

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Let’s send kids back to school safely

Published by editor on Wed, 08/26/2020 - 10:37am

New reports based on infor-mation from the Iowa Depart-ment of Public Health suggest that current COVID-19 condi-tions may be worse than we’ve been led to believe. It appears some new cases and deaths have been backdated, making it difficult to know how current circumstances are playing out.

I continue to practice pre-ventive health measures, in-cluding:

• Wearing a mask

• Keeping distance from others in public places

• Washing my hands fre-quently

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Epic Battle Royale

Published by editor on Wed, 08/19/2020 - 8:33am

You may have heard that Apple banned "Fortnight" last week.

It sounds crazy, but it's true. While those that currently have the game on their Apple device can continue to play the game, you can't update it nor can new players download it on to their mobile device.

How did this happen? Let's break down the situation here.

Let's say you're one of the who-knows-how-many

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The financial system

Published by editor on Wed, 08/19/2020 - 8:29am

The financial system. Wow, now there's a catchy title. I doubt there could be a subject less interesting than that, yet have more impact on our daily lives.

To most of us a financial system would be working for a paycheck and then spending it. But in this complex and uneth-ical world, where the money goes and why, is a mystery and too much trouble to try to understand.

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Gov. Reynolds’ Open Letter to Iowans on COVID19

Published by editor on Wed, 08/12/2020 - 10:20am

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds re-leased the following open letter to the state of Iowa:

Saturday, Aug. 8 marks five months since we learned of the first positive cases of COVID-19 in Iowa. Since then, our lives have been disrupted in ways we couldn’t have imag-ined. Schools and businesses closed. A record number of Iowans were suddenly out of work. And our normal daily routines were turned upside down as we prioritized doing things differently to mitigate the spread of the virus.

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The Exclusive Spider-Man

Published by editor on Wed, 08/12/2020 - 10:16am

It's going to be a while before you can get your next MCU fix in the theaters, but if you really need some super-hero action there is an alternative.

"Marvel's Avengers" is shaping up to be one of 2020's biggest video game releases, offering a campaign that lets you play as a variety of Marvel's most iconic characters, each with their own unique story and gameplay loop. Published by Square-Enix and developed by Crystal Dynamics, the game is coming out next month on PC, the Xbox One, and PS4, but there is a catch.

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A lesson from Rodney King

Published by editor on Wed, 08/12/2020 - 10:13am

You can only take so much vitamin D, so when we come in for the night, it's popcorn and a movie until Dawn falls asleep. We just have to sit around awhile. I am an infoholic but sometimes need a break, espe-cially these days where info is so sketchy.

Recently we watched a show called “Fury,” directed by Fritz Lang. He was a Ger-man film director who fled to the United States as the Nazis tried to coerce him into making propaganda films. Movies would not be the same without such groundbreaking work as “M” and “Metropolis.”