The frigid weeks of January can lead to some pretty cold news days in my industry — but not this year. The bustle of the last 14 days have provided numerous topics of conversation among readers, and even authors. For this reason, I am again resorting to a tactic used by the former owner of the Cassville Democrat, Bob Mitchell, and employing the “off the spike” technique of addressing multiple notes in one sitting...

School districts generally try to stay out of politics, but that has never stopped politics from finding its way into schools. Such was the case this week for the two largest school districts in Barry County — Monett and Cassville. At Monett, word began spreading of a book being deemed unfit for assigned reading. Sure enough, “Dear Martin” had been axed from the freshman English I assignment list, replaced with the ever-maligned “To Kill A Mockingbird.”...

In the past 22 months, I have heard more Greek alphabet talk than when I lived on-campus in my college days. As it stands, we are in the midst of the grasp of the COVID-19 pandemic’s 15th Greek letter variant — Omicron — with only nine letters left to Omega and the birth of a whole new naming system yet to be determined, according to the World Health Organization...