Viewpoints

God Doesn’t Remodel – He Rebuilds

I love building and fixing things. It’s fun to see the improvement at the end of a home or yard project.  Perhaps you enjoy those home improvement TV shows highlighting “extreme makeovers.”  It is amazing to see what some imagination, ingenuity, and hard work can accomplish!  But sometimes the old is just too worn out to fix, and the best idea is to tear down the old and start over.  With my skill level, that’s where I call a professional!

As I was thinking about this, I remembered God’s promise to Israel in Ezekiel 36:26: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”  It struck me that God doesn’t do remodels.  He always starts with a clean slate.

To the Editor:

We can’t begin to express how grateful we are to live in such a wonderful community.

In March we had a fire fighting appreciation shower for the rescue men and women who help to keep our community safe. So many people responded with a large outpouring of cookies, thank you notes and donations. We know the firemen and women and rescue workers really appreciated it and felt the love from all of you!

Our family distributed the cookies to the departments and came home with lots of knowledge about fire trucks and stations, police cars, and also many official golden police and sheriff stickers (that we are finding stuck to the strangest things :).

We have two more drop-off dates for the Lansing and Waterville fire departments as well - April 7 and April 12 - and we are grateful for the cookies that will be baked across the county for them as well.

In gratitude,
Val and Josh Miller
Waukon

To the Editor:

Here we go again, and I find it very hard work for me to write because of being 95. Age does something to you.

I have a few questions for you: Do you like what Putin has done to Ukraine? Yes or no? Is he a war criminal? Yes or no?

Do you like what Biden has done to our country with high-priced gas, much higher food prices, our open borders, our disastrous departure from Afghanistan, all paid by our dedicated, hard-working taxpayers? This list could go on and on. Biden’s been in Washington, DC for 47 years. Can you name one piece of legislation accomplished by him?

We are now in a severe downhill slide, and we could see $5 gas by the end of the year, food prices much higher, plus shortages, interest rates could go up, home heating bills up over $1,000 for winter. Older people with fixed incomes will suffer, and young working people that make our economy do well will be paying the bill.

Feeling lonely?

You’re not alone. In our country, more than a quarter of adults over age 60 live alone, according to a Pew Research Survey. Of them, 43 percent reported feeling lonely even before the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation which has worsened in the past two years.

Young people are lonely, too. In fact, new Harvard research suggests feelings of social isolation are on the rise and that those hardest hit are older teens and young adults.

Whatever your age, loneliness has significant health consequences. One study found that loneliness and social isolation can be as damaging to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and contributes to early mortality because it puts you at higher risk for cardiovascular disease, obesity, dementia, and depression.

To the Editor:

Our Veteran organization has many helpful programs for youth, community and our veterans. Our Veteran organization also lobbies for our veteran benefits to get and to keep the benefits that we have.

They also hire Veteran Service Officers that work in some of our medical centers and also in our Veterans Affairs (VA) regional offices that are advocates for our veterans and dependents and fight for their disability claims or survivor benefits as well as help with the appeal process, or act like your attorney in a VA appeal. These service officers are a very important part of getting claims granted.

Without our service organization, we would not be able to have many of the benefits that we do have. We need members to maintain those organizations as well as active members who can help continue to keep these organizations going.

To the Editor:

Yellow River State Forest is our own wonderful, driftless corner of Iowa. A valuable economic resource, with spectacular vistas, great hiking, backpacking and equestrian trails, camping, fishing, birding, mountain biking - whatever you do to escape life and enjoy nature. We have a gem here in Allamakee County that draws visitors from all over the country. They bring much-needed business to our communities.

With all these people and activities, there’s bound to be accidents, mishaps, maybe some not so legal activities. Then there are the spring/summer rainstorms which can cause flash flooding, putting campers along the river in grave danger. Unfortunately, there is no ranger at the forest to attend to these issues.

To the Editor:

The mental health system in the United States is currently in a state of crisis. Consider the following:

To the Editor:

Dear People of the Great State of Iowa,

Hello! I am a third-grade student in Northern Virginia. Our class is learning about the United States, and I will be teaching our school about the state of Iowa. In the month of May, I will create a display for our State Fair that I hope will make you proud.

Although I have gathered facts about your state from books and websites, I think that I can receive the best information from the people who live there. This is why I am writing to you. I am hoping that you would be willing to send me some items to help me learn more about the best things in your state. You might consider sending items such as postcards, pictures, souvenirs, this newspaper article, or any other unique items that would be useful or show your state pride. Here are a few questions:

To the Editor:

Ann Fields gets a letter grade of “F” in Economics 101 for her letter of March 9. She claims that everyone will have less with the new tax policy recently signed by Iowa’s governor. Ms. Fields fails to recognize that if Iowans are paying less income tax they automatically have more money available for their own personal needs.

Nor does she acknowledge that the State currently has a budget surplus that can be spent to cover any unexpected expenses on the part of the State. It appears to me that the legislators, who represent us, have done a great job in keeping spending under control, thus accounting for the current budget surplus. We should be applauding those efforts and remind our Federal Government that Iowa is a great example for fiscal responsibility.

To the Editor:

Hard-working Iowans deserve a fair tax plan which would ensure that tax cuts go to the middle class and the wealthy pay their fair share.  The bill recently passed by the Iowa Legislature, and signed by the governor, implementing a “flat income tax,” does neither.

Iowans deserve to know the truth about who really benefits from the plan: high income people would see immediate income tax cuts, while middle-class Iowans would not see even small cuts for several years, and many lower income earners would see little or no cuts at all. In fact, under this plan, it will take the average Iowan a century to receive the same tax benefits that the ultra-rich will receive in a single year. How is this fair?