There is an old saying that goes, “You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.” Several years ago I got to know a fellow speaker by the name of Franklin McGee, who lives down in Anniston, Alabama. He often tells the story about a young lady from their neck of the woods who graduated from college and went to work in the New York office of the French National Airlines. After a short time it became obvious that her…

A few weeks ago we had a beautiful and talented young lady come to present a program at our local Kiwanis Club. Her name is Laura Monteverdi, and she is the evening news anchor on KARK Television in Little Rock, our local NBC affiliate.             Laura is originally from Florida but came to us from KDLT in Sioux Falls, S.D. About six months after coming here, she had a very sad and tragic thing happen in her life. Her boyfriend Brock died from a heroin overdose in September 2015, and…

It is a proven fact that people accomplish more and do more when they enjoy what they are doing. This is also true when it comes to learning. To be sure, learning should be fun.             This is the theme for an exciting new copyrighted word game that I am developing titled, “Mr. Jim’s Word Game.” This is a vocabulary building program that I believe, in time, will be marketed all across the country.             The reason I feel so strongly about the need for this product is that I…

The task I have today is not an enviable one. I want to pay tribute to a very special and long-time friend by the name of Dr. C. Dennis Schick. For 25 years (1979 - 2004), Dennis was executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, and he helped me in my career more than any other human being on the face of the earth. He died on Monday, December 7, 2020, and left a legacy that will be honored and revered for many years to come. I will always be…

We have an award-winning little restaurant here in our community by the name of Stoby’s that is just down the street from the University of Central Arkansas. They went through a devastating fire some time back, but they have rebuilt and are stronger than ever.             One day a while back I met my friend, Dr. Larry Pillow, for breakfast at Stoby’s. While I was sitting there waiting for him to arrive, I began to observe a waitress named Betty, who later came over to take our orders, and she…

The word “perspective” is an interesting one in the English language. It means, according to the dictionary, “The relative importance of facts or matters from any special point of view.” To say it another way, if we are not careful we can get bogged down in the way we see things. I might add: we can get so bogged down that this condition can be fatal.             Some time back, when we were in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I saw an interview on television where a father from…

On May 1, 1938, I was born in the White County community of Bradford, Arkansas. My mother was the oldest of seven children and, ironically, her mother (my grandmother) was expecting twins at the same time. Just 10 days later they were born -- a boy and a girl, who were given the names Bill and Betty. It was really neat growing up with an aunt and uncle the same age, especially for birthdays and during the Christmas holidays. Betty retired from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and now…

In our great nation, with our political and economic systems, it is possible to achieve far more personal success than anywhere else in the world. When any person has a vision or a dream of something they would like to achieve, the human spirit is unleashed. With time, hard work and perseverance, they can and will achieve it. I say this because of a news article I ran across the other day that epitomizes this better than anything I have ever seen, known or run across before. We were sitting…

We hear a lot these days about school dropouts and what causes this to happen to so many students. In some parts of the nation it’s as high as four out of every 10 students who start to school in kindergarten and never walk down the aisle to get a high school diploma. There are also a vast number of students who walk across the stage to the familiar refrain of “Pomp & Circumstance”, yet they can barely read, if at all, the diploma they are given. The answer to…

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the old Roman philosopher and playwright, once said, “Pity is a mental illness induced by the spectacle of other people’s misery.” Who among us in this prosperous land we call America, the home of the free and the land of the brave, have not felt pity on the hordes of humanity who have been driven from their homes, raped and pillaged by thugs and villains who were stronger and more powerful? This is a spectacle we have seen far too often in the past several years, and…