Michelle Coston Longaugh, age 57, died June 10 in Wichita. She had been battling stage 4 anal cancer for 10 years. She recently said that she was seven years past her expiration date. She knew no strangers and touched many lives between 2010 and 2020. She and I met in 2011 when I helped her publish her blog about her […]

Larry Paine, our city administrator for about the past 12 years, is retiring at the end of this month. The Free Press has quoted him many times, but the story has never been about him, which is a good thing, in my opinion. I wish him the best, and enjoy your retirement. Our home has gone to the birds. First […]

God bless all the doctors, nurses, health care workers, first responders and National Guard. Also Dale’s Supermarket and other local businesses that have stayed open to meet our needs during the Coronavirus pandemic. We have gotten some great take-out meals in Hillsboro, Marion, Peabody, Durham and Goessel. n Congratulations to Maddy Daniels, graduating senior from Hillsboro High School, for being […]

It will be thirty years this May 24 that my dad died at Hillsboro Community Hospital of a massive stroke. If I live to April 10 this year, I will have lived longer than he did. I’m not planning to leave God’s green earth anytime soon, though.   If you’ve tried to trim your fingernails with a clipper and pretended […]

If you were wondering where I got the money to fly to all those places I mentioned in last month’s column, (see hillsborofreepress.com /opinion/partly nonsense if you need your memory refreshed) it covered a span of more than 50 years, so I didn’t pay for them all at one time. Some trips were for business and pleasure paid by others’. […]

One night when I couldn’t sleep, I figured I would recall all the airports I have traveled through to from here to there since about 1967. These flights all originated at Hillsboro Muni­cipal airport: Hillsboro to Armstrong, Ontario, with stops in Buffalo, MN, and Thunder Bay, Ontario, en­route with Dr. Norman Abrahams. It was a fishing trip my dad took […]

I am announcing a change this week about this column. Beginning in 2020, I am cutting back to a monthly Partly Nonsense, with the permission of Publisher, Joey Young. I am hoping he or one of the owners will write in this space in the weeks I am not. I would like to thank my loyal readers who have read […]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you and yours. I missed the festiveness of the office since I’ve been retired for the past year. I missed the candy and all the food except I’m a bit smaller for my absence. My sister and her family will have been here for Christ­mas by the time you are reading this […]

If you missed the concert this past summer at First Mennonite Church presented by the family group 5x Harder, you have another chance to hear them. The family includes Pastor Tom Harder and his wife, Lois, who is the interim associate pastor at Alex­anderwohl Menno­nite Church and their daughters. They are Anna, Madeline and her husband Eric, and Hillary, youngest […]

I think I may have mentioned the app ESPN+ previously in this column. I now refer to it as ESPN + – – because it is extremely hard to use. I downloaded a speech to text app and this is what happened because this is so hard for me to type. I have named ESPN plus minus minus because it’s very […]