Opinion

A half century ago in rural Pennsylvania, a woman named Clem spent her mornings immersed in the pungent smell of chlorine and the ornery noise of youngsters wakened too early.

Part drill instructor and part den mother, Clem preached water safety with the fervor of a country minister, and over the years she taught thousands of young charges how to swim. For the older students, the ones earning their lifeguard certification, this also meant a course in cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

By John Newkirk

As a boy I used to pass time on the school bus by counting street signs bearing names of classmates or family friends: Norman Lane. Willa Way. Lemasters Drive. Julie Lane. Granzella Road. Herzman Drive. What a novelty, I thought, to live in a community where roads are named after residents who are still living.

As journalists, the stories we tell are often referred to as the first draft of history. Others have said that we put the headlines on history as it happens.

As an editor over the past 37 years, I have written somewhere around 150,000 headlines — a few clever, others disturbing, some so heartbreaking that they live still in my nightmares.

Anybody know where a guy can buy some crow meat? And while we’re at it, do any of you have a good crow recipe?

I confidently wrote last year that while Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ campaigns for president were showing signs of success, they couldn’t last. I asserted that Trump’s success was nothing more than the result of the outrageousness of his comments, and that Sanders’ appeal had more to do with an enthusiasm gap for Hillary Clinton than for any real support for him.

It may well be up to us.

The odd constitutional provisions that will have the state of Colorado issuing refunds to taxpayers at the same time as cuts have to be made to a variety of government programs in 2016 have long been a source of consternation. Over the last year, a variety of things have been discussed.

It’s a little known fact that members of Congress don’t have to live in the districts from which they are elected. That’s not the case for school board members in Colorado.

There was some question about the residency of candidate Regan Benson during the recent school board election in Jefferson County, but as it didn’t appear (or occur) that she would be a particularly viable candidate, the issue went away pretty quietly.

As we enter the holiday season, I’m thinking about a big do and a big don’t.

The big do is Colorado Gives Day. In its five-year history, Colorado Gives has become the preferred way of making end-of-year charitable gifts for many people in our state. An initiative of the Community First Foundation and First Bank, Colorado Gives Day is an easy way to make contributions to more than 1,800 of our state’s nonprofit organizations.

Few things are more important to our four newspapers than coverage of high school sports, and few journalists could have brought that coverage to our readers more completely or competently than Michael Hicks. But after five years, Michael is leaving his post as sports editor at Evergreen Newspapers for his next challenge at the Boulder Daily Camera, and that paper is beyond lucky to have him.

Imagine the impact of a Bernie Sanders-versus-Donald Trump presidential election in 2016. Property values in Canada would likely skyrocket with the biggest exodus of Americans to Canada since the end of the draft.

Fourteen months before the next presidential election, the biggest surprise has been the emergence of Sanders and Trump when conventional wisdom suggests that neither has any chance, or business, of becoming president of the United States. Their seeming viability results from completely different circumstances in our two major political parties.