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The time has come...

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I always thought I would know when the time was right. And now, even though I feel that time has come, it is still a difficult decision. This is my last editorial as I will be retiring from my job at Sentinel at the end of this week. I plan to continue my morning job at the Stockton Housing Authority. This decision did not come easy as I love working with Susan, Virgi and Bart, and have had a great time working here for almost 15 years—they are like family to me; and I love them dearly.
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Grace Notes

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There was an interesting story in the Salina Journal recently about personalized license plates and the approval process each state has to go through before approving and creating them. Surely you have followed a vehicle, or sat behind a vehicle at a stoplight, and played the game of trying to decipher what the combination of letters and/or numbers stand for. Rarely did anyone know what my father’s plate meant: “XZDGOHT,” and I don’t know what kind of hoops he had to jump through to “prove” that it was not a “bad” combination of letters! Each state has their own rules and regulations for personalized plates. To have a personalized plate in Kansas, it cannot have more than seven letters, numbers and/or spaces for autos and trucks, and no more than five for motorcycles. The Kansas Department of Revenue runs each personalized tag request through a massive list of 28,562 objectionable combinations. The list grows each year as people come up with new ideas and combinations. I’m not going to waste my space or time listing some of the personalized plates that are banned; I’ll just let you use your imagination. I’m just glad to know there are strict rules that KDOR has set. In the case of my dad’s license plate, it is a “low German” slang expression for “I love you.” Seriously. It is pronounced “X-Z-D-GOAT.” As siblings, my brothers and I fought over ownership of my dad’s license plate; I lost out.
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Linkletter: Back when television was really funny

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The more you hang around kids, the more you learn. It may be weird stuff, but it also may be profound. When I was a kid, and television was in two colors only — black and white — there were several shows that we made sure we never missed. One thing about television in those days: we only had it on when there was a show that we watched. Of course there were only three channels, and the TV was small. We planned ahead to watch a television show, and would sit down as a family to watch together.

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10 new words you should know in 2023

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If there’s one thing we can count on it’s that our language is always changing. And just when you think you can hold your own on intelligent conversations with family and friends, the wordsmiths who don’t have anything better to do than come up with new words to expand their vocabularies, well, they come up with new words. Actually, they don’t make up the new words; they listen in on conversations and observe how people are communicating on social media to “get the pulse” of our language. If you ask me, our language has gone to H-E-DoubleHockeySticks. With the pace of social media and the speed of which news travels, dictionary gurus can’t possibly keep up.
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Introducing: The Word of the Year 2022

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It’s that most wonderful time of the year when we find out what the dictionary brainiacs determine to be the Word of the Year. Sometimes there are surprises, and other times, duds. You just gotta “take what you git and don’t pitch a fit,” and then start using the word in your conversations, just to ramp up your style. The folks at Merriam-Webster huddled together, and three days later came out of their cave and announced to the English-speaking tribes of the world: “The Word of the Year for 2022 is... gaslighting.”
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Grace Notes

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So far, I think I’m batting a thousand on writing the new year correctly when I write the date. Usually I do pretty good at the beginning of a new year because I’m still thinking about it. It will be some random day in February or March when I mess up the date.
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Christmas movies

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With the plethora of television networks to choose from, there has also been a plethora (I like this word; can you tell?) of Christmas movies, some starting in early fall and I suppose there are many still available now in early January. I watched more Christmas movies this year than in other years, perhaps because of the shear number of them available. Even so, I still could count on one hand how many I watched. I just don’t enjoy watching a movie that I already know how it will end, because either the girl always gets the guy, or the other way around. Every single storyline seemed to be the same, no matter which movie I watched.
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Joy to the World!

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Two brilliant songwriters—although they never met—together created one of the most lasting songs of Christmas. Although they lived half a world away from each other and were separated by almost a century of time, their collaboration created a timeless holiday classic for every age and every audience, and probably a favorite of many of you reading this tale. As a matter of fact, Isaac Watts and Lowell Mason probably didn’t even know they had given the world a Christmas anthem at all.
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What Child Is This

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It would be impossible for me to name my favorite Christmas Carol—they are ALL my favorite! But certain musicians can really knock it out of the park and sometimes make me hit “replay” on the CD. Put it this way — when Andrea Bocelli sings “What Child Is This,” I know it is Christmas. One of the most moving and beautiful Victorian carols, “What Child Is This,” can trace its history back farther than the days of the infamous Henry VIII. Though the song was registered to a Richard Jones in 1580, legend has it that the notorious King Henry might have written the original lyrics himself as he courted Anne Boleyn. The song’s association with King Henry was forever tied to “Greensleeves” when William Shakespeare used it in his play, “The Merry Wives of Windsor.”