Local Columnists

A story we didn’t publish has been the subject of conversations around the Columbia Missourian for the past week or so. Many people have thrown in their opinions on how to handle the firing of Missouri lacrosse club coach Kyle Hawkins.

Murray the cat jumped on the bed, stretched out and, whatdoyaknow, showed off a fresh sore spot in his gray pelt. Murray seemed completely unconcerned. He sort of let me look at his wound and then bounced off the bed.

I was speaking at a conference recently in Calgary, Canada, when a student from Montana posed this question to me at the end of my talk: “Dr. Merrill, you referred to ‘foreign students’ in your talk. That seems to me to be a put-down of these students. Shouldn’t you call them ‘international students’?”

The presence of voter fraud, as with beauty, is firmly fixed in the eyes of the beholder.

Would you like to remember special people and pets in a unique way? Consider planting a memorial garden.

I can remember the days when folks reached middle age and eagerly looked forward to the time when they could retire.

Each year, several respected surveys measure press freedom around the world. Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press Survey is probably the oldest. When did it start and what nations does it cover?

As I write, the river is rising. It’s not really reasonable to expect that it will reach the House and Senate chambers in the state Capitol. Still, without torturing the metaphor, I think we can say that a flood is a lot like a legislative session.

I was scanning quotes on Bartleby.com on mowing grass, and this popped up.

Perfect. Because if one thing is going to test your persistence week after week after week after week, it is the persistence of grass to keep growing and growing and growing and growing.

Just heard that New College in San Francisco is beginning to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Activism and Social Change.

Luckily I had gone outside and taken pictures of my early flowering plants and shrubs before the 20 degrees and below temperatures turned them all into brown and green mush.

It seemed strange to me last Saturday, when I found myself standing in the aisle of the lawn and garden center pondering whether I should plant a few vegetables in my flower garden. Let’s face it, except for a couple of tomato and green pepper plants, I haven’t done any serious vegetable gardening since my son went off to college more than 20 years ago.

The Missourian reported last week that the University of Missouri System Board of Curators has ordered each campus to carve 1 percent from next year’s budget to sweeten the pot for faculty salaries. For the flagship campus, that will come to about $4.2 million. (As the Missourian noted in one of those helpful little charts, MU’s budget is almost as big as the budgets of the three satellite campuses combined.)

There is one yearly ritual that I endure to ensure that spring is really here — and that is the annual garage clean up. My husband and I tackle the daylong task together.

Where are all the bees going? These members of the insect family Apoidea with broad bodies and four wings are communitarian colonists that gather nectar and pollen.

If you are going to maintain your sanity, you may need to take some down time. It’s vacation time, even if you spend it at home.

If you were at last Sunday’s performance of “Romeo and Juliet” in Jesse Hall, as I was, I’m sure you spotted right away, as I did, the obvious parallels between that classic and the long-running show that is on stage again this week down in the City of Jefferson. Of course, I mean the “Great MOHELA Shuffle.”

My gorgeous spring ladies, the bleeding hearts are a sad sight right now.

In their frozen and wilted state, they are not the usual harbingers of spring in my backyard. My largest plant is a large mass of rotten vegetation.

Rep. Shannon Cooper has a different interpretation of the term “represent” than I do. I can’t imagine that the good people of western Missouri sent him to Jeff City to undo the expressed will of the voters, but that’s his intention.

It’s never happened to me before. And I never want it to happen again. Every week when I sit down to write this column I have an idea or two as to what topic I will write about. But last week when I sat down at 5 a.m. (my usual time to begin writing) my mind went blank.