Riverbend Journal

  A month or so ago and again this week, our little town made the news when a prayer before the local city council started led to a prayer to Satan. As usual, the media outlets across the country picked up the "story" with sensationalized headlines but had absolutely zero backstory. A guy stood up and said a prayer to Satan, not once, but now for the second time. That was all the details offered.  The backstory actually began eight or nine months ago when our city council voted to allow their meetings opened with a prayer by any citizen who wished to sign up. I of course was against it because I am a firm believer in the separation of church and state as generally interpreted by our First Amendment in our Constitution. Only one city council member thought it might lead to trouble in the future and was the lone dissenting vote.  The warning shot came later when a few months later, a fellow citizen offered up an amusing prayer in a Star Wars theme, among other things urging...

As per my usual, I stayed up late last night waiting as the election results came in. It didn't take long for me to determine how the night was going to go and it looked pretty bleak if you were a Republican. I was pretty ambivalent about it all on a national level because with a Republican president and a Democrat congress, I'm pretty confident that we aren't going to get some bad piece of legislation forced upon us. Though with the Current Occupant, one just never knows.  I was more interested in more local politics. Iowa, despite what national newscasters say, has long been a purple state and has swung as the tides have shifted. It is just that Iowa has been pretty favorable for the Current Occupant for such a long time that we have been labeled as a red state even though Obama pretty easily won it back in his day. I think a lot of that is due to our governor long being held by the Republican party. What perhaps most of those not from here never see is that Iowa has long...

  Just kidding on the title of course. After somewhere around four or five months on non-stop attack ads, I am going to be thankful to get back to ads about ED or people dancing in supermarkets because of the medicine they are taking. Not a single one of the thousands of ads foisted on me changed my mind in the slightest. All my votes were based upon personal research of what that candidate will do for me and not what the other candidate says the other candidate will do for me. Overall, my ballet was purple this year. The past couple years I have lived in a complete red world, i.e. one party completely controls my state and the federal governments. I have always firmly believed that when one party holds all the power, compromise is put to the wayside and we tend to get the worst legislation passed. So my hope, as always, is for a mixed bag of parties holding power. Forced compromise or just gridlock seems to be the best I can hope for these days. Some predictions: Both parties will...

Tiller waiting repairs and fall servicing before being put to bed Despite my fall crop of peas I am planting to try and make up for the peas that ripened while I was away in the Philippines back in June, my garden is now done and/or we are done with it. Let me explain. We still had tomatoes and peppers but the tomatoes are few are far between now as the plants are mostly dead and haven't been flowering for a long time. The peppers we are just tired of dealing with them. There are only so many peppers one can eat in their diet before you grow tired of them. So on a particular nice day a couple weeks back, I decided to put the garden to bed. Removing the electrified net fence while not difficult, does take me probably an hour to remove and put back up so it not something I want to do frequently. So I took it down and decided to accomplish all the garden work I wanted to do until next spring before putting it back up. With the netting down, I removed all the tomato and pepper plants a...

After fifteen years of nearly constant barking from our neighbors various dogs they've had over those years, one would think I would have noticed after a week of not seeing Walter, that something had occurred, but I didn't. My mind assumed it was simply timing and that he had been let out while I was inside. However after the second week, I finally suspected something had happened to him and mentioned it to my wife. It was perhaps another week that went by before we ran into another neighbor who knew the answer. One of Walter's terminally ill owners is now in hospice in a distant city. The remaining owner still living at home across the street wasn't able to take care of him and so he was rehomed. Where I do not know but I'm guessing it looks something like the AI generated picture above. I for one, won't be losing any sleep of Walter's new home though I would expect his new owner must be saintlike to want to take in such a dog. Instead I will perhaps be spe...