Month: June 2020

Featured
culture

An Awesome story of horses and healing

Shanna Spangler and Zach star in the Awesome Gal trailer.

By Bill Kovarik

Reggie feared horses.

The 17 year old girl came from an abusive family, and she was fine, mucking out stalls and doing chores — so long as the horses kept their distance.

Awesome Gal, a rescued Tennessee Walker, cowered in her stall whenever Reggie or other people came near. Awesome had also been abused.

Both girl and horse worked on a farm with Deborah Ring, who watched, over the winter months, as an unlikely friendship evolved.

“I think the turning point came when Reggie was cleaning manure from a field,” Ring said. “Reggie was approached by other horses, and turned and ran, jumping over the fence.” Awesome Gal saw the horses threatening Reggie and galloped over to protect her, Ring said. Read More “An Awesome story of horses and healing”

Op-eds

Outcry is not enough

Photo by Ted Eytan, Creative Commons.

Opinion by  John Hopkins
Floyd County Democratic Pary chair

John Hopkins, Democratic party

Americans are right to protest when police abuse their power and take someone’s life in the process.

We are right to protest when obvious crimes are ignored. We are right to protest when our nation’s wealth is employed by law to diminish the weak and the voiceless.

We are right to protest when protest itself is treated as though it were unlawful.

Protest may wake the sleeping conscience, may rally the sympathetic bystander – and yet, protest taken to extreme will never carry the day. When the justified shout of “This is wrong” is lost in the smoke and rubble borne of reckless anger, society will rouse itself to save what property it can.

Read More “Outcry is not enough”