MEEKER | Reporting and telling someone else’s stories is an awesome responsibility. The editor of this community’s paper, Niki Turner of the Rio Blanco Herald Times, understands the importance of that. It also seems that she also understands that the word awesome seems to be put in conversation daily. Ask[Read More…]
Columns
Editor’s Column: The stories that must be told
Every story starts with a question. Sometimes those questions are easy to find the answers to, and sometimes, well, sometimes they’re not. In this week’s edition of the Herald Times you’ll find a story unlike anything we’ve printed for a very long time, if ever—an in-depth investigative journalism piece. How[Read More…]
{OPED} Loose Ends: A teacher or a writer?
MEEKER | “So, which are you, a teacher or a writer? The blunt question took me aback for a minute. I had only been teaching in this community (and anywhere else for that matter) for a couple of years. When I accepted the part-time teaching position, I was working in[Read More…]
{OPED} Loose Ends: The Real West
MEEKER | “Do you ever get over the blueness of the sky?” is a question that has been asked by more than a few visitors to our house over the years. Most of them are from another section of the country and used to seeing gunmetal grey over their heads.[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: Don’t ignore your mental health
Today (Thursday, Oct. 10) is World Mental Health Day 2019. This year’s focus is on suicide prevention. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 15-34, and the fourth leading cause of death for ages 35-54. In 2016, the suicide rate for our veterans was 1.5 times higher[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: A lot of learning in a year
I don’t want to write this column this week, much like I didn’t want to write the column I wrote a year ago. It’s been one year since my oldest son, Ethan, died in a car accident. He was 25. Typing those words still seems surreal. The first anniversary of[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: Even a broken clock is right twice a day
There’s a beautiful, elegant clock tower on the southwest corner of the courthouse square in Meeker. There’s only one problem with the clock: it’s wrong. The courthouse clock is about 5-7 minutes fast. How do I know? Because when I’m rushing to get to a meeting, invariably I check that[Read More…]
Loose Ends: Rebuilding the bridge between cultures
MEEKER | “Where did the Indians go?” continues to be a commonly asked question from first time visitors to this area. The White River Utes were removed to a desert reservation from their homeland in 1879 after Indian Agent Nathan Meeker and the other men working with him were killed.[Read More…]
Loose Ends: Sheepdogs and the end of summer
Most folks in the White River Valley were sure the dog days of summer were over until they either volunteered or attended another successful Meeker Classic Sheepdog Championship. For the past 33 years, our community’s different kind of dog days—the Meeker Classic—has heralded the end of summer. Watching the handlers[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: Knowing where your tax dollars are going
Everyone likes to talk about who’s spending taxpayer money, but few taxpayers seem to know (or care) where their personal tax dollars go. We pay a lot of taxes, from income tax and sales tax and property tax, business taxes, payroll taxes, inheritance taxes, retirement taxes, capital gains taxes, excise[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: Technology: tyrant or tool?
As a member of Generation X, in our lifetime we’ve witnessed a rapid acceleration in technology that has taken us from computers that were programmed by cassette tapes and used televisions for monitors and cell phones the size of bricks, to computers in our pockets that double as phones. Remember[Read More…]
Editor’s Column: It’s not all black and white
On occasion, the esteemed former editors of the HT seem to speak to me when I’m going through the archives, and their words of wisdom are always timely. This week it was a brief note from 100 years ago by Meeker Herald editor and proprietor James Lyttle. “Many a good[Read More…]