Riverbend Journal

My great grandfather Victor Kuck (far right) somewhere in France during World War I  

Back when we had a garden down at the farm that was probably four times the size of our current garden, we invested in a nice tiller. BCS Tillers are made in Italy and are known for their quality and versatility. Technically, it is a walk behind tractor with a tiller attachment because they make a dozen other attachments for it from brush cutters to snow throwers. We only have the tiller attachment which makes things easy since I don't have to swap out anything. They make a variety of models but I chose the 722 model mostly because it came with electric start. I've have spent a fair amount of my life yanking on corded starts that I wanted something I could start like a car. The electric start worked really well for the first year or so that we owned the thing but then the battery died over one of our cold winters and I've never replaced it since. In the spring, I will put a portable charger on it a couple hours before I till the garden and that is good enough to start it th...

  I sit on the board of an orchestra and we kicked off our 40th season recently. As on officer of the board, I have to show up early so I was able to snap a picture of an empty stage before the performance began. Although I like our symphony and our civic center, we don't get any off Broadway plays coming through. We do have a couple locally produced shows but nothing I would call current. Someday, I hope to just get season tickets at the civic center in our Major Urban Jungle but it will have to wait until we have more time since it is a major commitment to get there, eat, watch a play and get home. Not a very good picture of some Oreo macarons by youngest daughter created. She is turning into quite the baker which I have no complaints about. I told her that they were so tasty that she should start a side business. I thought she would say she couldn't sell them for a price to make it worthwhile but her response was that merely she wouldn't have enough time to meet demand. ...

  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...