By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor Longtime County Line readers may recall earlier days, when this column described the Little Kid. As it turns out, our youngest daughter is not so young anymore; consequently, during our vacation this past week, we dug out the...
Backtalk: What is the key to a small town’s success?
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor It’s rather creepy in Ontario on July 5. The streets are empty, music and random explosions no longer fill the air, and the packs of roving juveniles have slipped away to some undisclosed destination. The trash dotting the...
Backtalk: Concern about ATC line mushrooms
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor When I wrote a story in January about plans to extend a high-voltage power line from Madison to La Crosse, it was greeted largely by yawns. With the exception of a contingent outraged that it might pass through the Kickapoo Valley...
Backtalk: Lyme-disease patients left in the lurch
What is it about Lyme disease? Some people come down with it, take quick courses of antibiotic therapy and are good to go. For others, it is totally devastating and their lives are never the same. During my chat with Erin Rueckheim for this week’s story, I was...
Backtalk: Local restaurants need our support
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor “What are we going to do without (insert restaurant name)?” one of my readers commented the other day. With the closing of one local restaurant and an uncertain future for another, it is obvious that the dwindling of local...
Backtalk: Meeting with Kapanke accomplishes little
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor Bring on the dog and the pony and the smoke and mirrors. There’s nothing like a chat with your friendly legislator to remind you that all politics is primarily posturing and pandering. I would like to tell you that I left...
Backtalk: Champion father uses feather duster to deter would-be thief
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor Mother’s Day is Sunday, but around our place, we are more in Dad’s Day mode. It all began Saturday afternoon, when my daughter Sarah was working alone at the County Line office and the phone rang at home. “I hear someone walking...
Backtalk: Weddings were ‘largely simple affairs’
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor The world may be going to hell in a handcart, but on Friday, we will take a break from preparing for Armageddon and tune in to the royal wedding. The last time we took notice of Britain’s royal family was when Prince Charles...
Backtalk: Like Cardinals, Americans have imagined enemies
By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor It’s been nearly a week since a cardinal declared war on our home. When I first heard the racket, I thought it was one of those judgment errors that birds often make in flight, errors that end with the creature knocked senseless...
