Opinion

The University of Arkansas rightfully called an end to Chad Morris’ Reign of Error on Sunday, less than 24 hours after — just when you thought Razorback football couldn’t possibly get any worse — the Hogs were blown off the field by a Western Kentucky team that couldn’t beat Central Arkansas this season...

Like many of you, I have been on Facebook for years — nearly 10 years, to be exact. I joined the site during my junior year of high school and used the heck out of it for a pretty long time. Everyone likes to share what’s on their mind every now and then. Teenagers love to do that regularly. I was not an exception...

Last week marked a major milestone for me. On Oct. 28, 2013, I broke up with my abusive ex-boyfriend for good. We were together for three and a half years. Those were some of the worst years of my life, but I didn’t realize it until the relationship ended...

A couple of weeks ago, I answered two telephone calls within a day or two of each other. The first was a woman calling from out of state, obviously distraught. She wanted to have her mother’s obituary published and she wasn’t sure exactly how to accomplish that. ...

A few weeks ago, Gideon and I spent a weekend at a bed and breakfast in downtown Eureka Springs. I had asked Gideon to plan some surprises for my birthday and explained that I wanted the kind of surprise I could figure out before it happens. Maybe that’s not how traditional surprises work, but I’m not very traditional. ...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about University of Arkansas football coach Chad Morris, and my belief that it’s time for the university to let Morris go and move in a new direction. College football is a business, in many ways much more than it is a game. Morris is paid millions of dollars for one primary mission: to win football games...

Every Sunday at noon, Gideon and I visit with a dear friend in Berryville. It has become one of our favorite traditions –– no matter how the week will go, we know we’ll kick it off with lovely conversation, lemonade and maybe even some kitty snuggles. You guys know I live for kitty snuggles...

My youngest son married his high-school sweetheart on Sunday. It was, of course, a happy occasion, but it left me feeling a little melancholy. My life hasn’t exactly read like a happily-ever-after movie script. I’ve been divorced three times. I’ve buried both my parents. I’ve been laid off. I’ve lived on the outskirts of poverty at times as a single dad paying a big chunk of my income in child support...

To be honest, we were starting to doubt you. You’ve arrived fashionably late before, but this year it began to border on a faux pas. You know we love you and mean all this in love. At least I hope you do. Welcome to your intervention, Fall. Let’s just cut to the chase. ...

Some days are busier than others here at Carroll County Newspapers. Mondays can be pretty hectic, then the pace slows down for the rest of the week. Wednesday afternoons are typically fairly quiet, so when my friend David Bell (he’s also a pretty fair photographer) asked me if I’d like to tag along with him and another gentleman for a catfish lunch in Harrison last Wednesday, it didn’t take me long to think it over...

Dear Editor, The Berryville Public Library gets by with a little help from our Friends … actually, we get by with a lot of help from our Friends! Re-established three years ago, our Friends of the Library group has raised nearly $30,000 to fund children’s programming, provide new furniture, purchase new and emerging technology and help support the building of a new library...

Today is my 28th birthday –– I am officially a member of the Late 20s Club. Birthdays aren’t usually a big deal to me, but finding a place in the world certainly is. That’s what this birthday represents to me. Five years ago, I celebrated my 23rd birthday just a few months after I started working at Carroll County News. ...

One hundred and 14 to zero. That’s the combined score of Shiloh Christian School’s last two high school football games. The Saints won 56-0 at Berryville on Sept. 27 and then posted a 58-0 home victory last Friday against Green Forest. Both Berryville coach Doug Shott and Green Forest coach Bobby Bishop say this year’s Shiloh Christian team is exceptional even by Shiloh’s high standards. That’s saying a lot for a program that boasts seven state championships in football...

May 24, 2004, is a day I will never forget. It’s the day my childhood ended. It’s the day I realized the people we love can choose to leave this world. It’s the day I fully grasped what it means to die. On that day, my papaw died by suicide. Jimmie Lynn Campbell was born on Feb. ...

One of the challenges — and one of the perks — of being in the news business is that you never know what a particular day will bring. I like to say that I’ve covered everything from elementary school spelling bees to executions at the state prison over the course of 30 years as a journalist. ...

I enjoy and often agree with editorials by Scott Loftis, but I must offer an alternative view to his “Fall Fantasies,” (Carroll County News, 9-17-2019).  I believe the condition of “sweating … through spring and summer …waiting for the respite of fall” is a condition perpetuated by the relatively recent proliferation of air conditioning. ...

Four weeks ago, I wrote that it was too early to accurately assess Chad Morris’ performance as head football coach at the University of Arkansas. The proper time to evaluate Morris, I wrote, would be two or three years in the future. I was wrong. Now is a perfectly appropriate time to judge Morris’ performance, and it’s time to make a change...

Tomorrow night marks a yearly milestone for a group of my close friends. It is the finale of Big Brother 21 — a critical two hours of reality television that will reveal the winner of our fantasy draft teams.  Dora, Kasey, Gideon and I started out the summer with four contestants each. ...

According to the fine folks at Google, the first day of fall is now less than a week away. The autumnal equinox — that is, according to the equally fine folk at Wikipedia, one of two days each year when the plane of Earth’s equator passes directly through the sun, thus resulting in approximately equal durations of daytime and nighttime across the planet — will occur on Monday, Sept. 23...

This past Saturday, Gideon and I celebrated the marriage of two dear friends. It was a full weekend of wedding events, with the rehearsal dinner Friday night, the wedding Saturday afternoon and an after-party that night by the river. The wedding was beautiful from beginning to end. ...

They say if you go shopping with cash, you’ll spend less than you would if you were using a credit card. It has something to do with seeing the money leave your wallet versus just swiping your card and going on your merry way. Apparently spending money is different when you literally feel it slipping out of your hands...

Regular readers of this column know that I’m a devoted baseball fan. More accurately, I’m a devoted Chicago Cubs fan. This year, that means baseball season for me will likely be finished sooner than it has been for the past four years. This Cubs team isn’t making the playoffs and if it somehow does get in, it won’t be for long...

It’s birthday season in the Loftis family. My youngest son, Ryan, turned 22 on Thursday, Aug. 29. My daughter-in-law, Christi, is celebrating a birthday today, on Labor Day. My older son, Ronnie, will be 27 on Sunday, Sept. 8. And five days after that, the old man will be 50...

Most people would complain about working on a holiday, but I’m happy to come to the office on Labor Day every year. Monday is a production day –– that means we have to come in to put out a newspaper. Fortunately, we make our own holidays here at Carroll County News...

A little less than a year ago, I wrote in this space that it was premature to judge Chad Morris’ performance as the University of Arkansas’ head football coach after an ugly road loss at Colorado State. As it turned out, Colorado State was just an omen of things to come for the Razorbacks in 2018. ...

There’s a dead snake in my car, and I can’t do anything about it for the rest of the week. A dead snake, you ask? Why can’t you remove it if it’s, you know, dead? Well, it’s wrapped around my air conditioner motor, where it has been taunting me since last Tuesday...

Will you vote in the 2020 election? Our democracy is struggling right now. We are a divided country. Many people don’t care about their voice in our democracy — they don’t vote. Our freedoms come with a price — it is a duty to vote! A democracy works only if its people participate...

On Aug. 19, 2015, Alison Parker turned 24. One week later, the morning reporter at WDBJ in Roanoke, Va., was shot dead, along with cameraman Adam Ward, on live TV no less. The shooter then uploaded his own video of the murders on Twitter. It was a dark day in our country’s history, one many of us remember...

As I write this, on Monday, it’s my dad’s 72nd birthday. Or, more accurately, it would have been. Dad died more than seven years ago, in July 2012, after surgery to remove a portion of his lung where doctors had discovered cancer. Dad was a smoker for most of his life, and likely was exposed to harmful asbestos both during his service in the U.S. Navy (he was a Vietnam veteran) and his long career as a service technician with Sears Roebuck and Company...