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God never intended for everyone to do what they see fit

By Mark Wilmoth Five hundred years before Christ, the city of Athens, Greece, birthed the world’s first known democracy. Though only male citizens could vote (women and slaves were excluded), the idea that people might determine their own laws and rule themselves was attractive, considered a great step up from the despotic rule of kings. Even the arbitrary rule of kings, however, proved better than having no rules at all. Judges 17:6 (NIV) describes conditions in Israel before Saul was anointed as Israel’s first king: “In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as they saw ...

Each of us needs to be in the worship assembly

On September 7, 1995, Baltimore’s Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig’s previous Major League consecutive game record by playing in 2131 consecutive games. Before he was finished, Ripken set the new record at 2632 games, the equivalent of going more than 16 seasons without a missed appearance. When asked why he had never missed a game despite injuries, slumps and personal problems, Ripken responded, “I wanted to be there.” The owner of a New Orleans restaurant chain served as the president of several civic organizations and also as an Elder in his local church. Despite his busy ...

Leaders change the world through action

When the Soviet Union overran and annexed Latvia back in 1940, the American Charge d’Affaires ad interim, John Wiley, worried that Red Cross supplies shipped to Latvia for humanitarian reasons would be seized by the Soviets. Wiley asked permission from the State Department to fly the United States flag above the Red Cross warehouse to deter Soviet interference. The State Department responded, “No precedent exists for such action.” Wiley promptly raised the American flag over the warehouse and cabled back, “As of this date, I have established precedent.” Good for Wiley. He saw ...

Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Corner: Fossil fuels, war, and home

By Jean Ambrose I write this column not as a historian or a policy expert, but as someone who lives in a region that has been asked, again and again, to give more than it can. Each morning, when I look out from the ridges where I live in the Mid-Ohio Valley, I am reminded that the places we love are never abstract. They hold our bodies, our memories, our dead. We are part of them, and they are part of us. And they carry the marks of the choices we make about energy. When I watch what is unfolding in Venezuela, I do not see a distant crisis, but a familiar pattern. Deep beneath ...

Column hits the five-year mark

Five years ago this week, I wrote the first “The Way I See It” column. That’s a lot of me, and a lot of you, our reader, reading what I have to say each week. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day each week to read what I have to say. I hope I have not bored you too much. If my math is correct, this is column 261. I went back and reread the first column to see what I promised I would write about. In the beginning I said that I would frequently talk about the daily photo that appears on Page 2 and “showcases the beauty of the Mid-Ohio Valley. At that time ...

The 27th Amendment

By Jacqueline Richey How did a nineteen-year-old defy his professor and the Supreme Court? He got the 27th Amendment ratified when no one thought it was possible. Gregory Watson, a sophomore at the University of Texas at Austin, had to write a paper for a government class. He researched amendments that Congress had approved with the necessary two-thirds majority in both chambers but which had not been ratified by enough state legislatures to become part of the U.S. Constitution. One, he told NPR, “just jumped right out at me.” It read, “No law varying the compensation for the ...