Alfredisms

“Polking Around”
April 22, 1971

“In England there are 2,000 more bet shops than drug stores. We have no idea where we came across that statistic, but the oddity of the comparison is intriguing. In the hunt for new sources of revenue, national and local governments are, more and more, eyeing the citizen’s almost pathological urge to gamble with the thought that here is the next great natural revenue source.

By Vincent Dowling

Norris Alfred no longer polking,
With curious Polaroid and pen
About Nebraska.

February 27, 1986 "Farms, farming and politics"

Converting Nebraska sandhill land to row-crop agriculture, probably, has been the most disastrous development of contemporary industrialized agriculture and its high-cost efficiency. We remember a character on local television news, with greedy-looking facial features, who had invested in sandhill ranch land with the intention of converting it to row-crop and then selling it as irrigated farmland at an inflated price.

February 18, 1988 "Polking Around"

A new definition for "wilderness" was in a news story about a small hamlet near the Canadian border with New Hampshire where the first votes were cast in that state’s primary election, Tuesday. The story described this hamlet as being in the wilderness, 50 miles from a MacDonald’s restaurant. Certainly, that is a pertinent, contemporary definition for wilderness.

March 28, 1974
“Sundry Comment and a Protesting Letter”

There is much to ridicule about a lifestyle based on affluence. Trading stamps is one item. We suspect future historians will view the idea of trading stamps with skepticism and hilarity. They may even wonder about advertising. A future world of people, who will long have been conditioned to doing with less, may also read about life in the 20th century and wonder at our greed: “They had so much. Why couldn’t some of it have been saved?”

January 26, 1989
“Small Rural Communities Will Survive”

What has been concerning us lately is the viability of small, rural communities in these days of increasingly industrialized agriculture that eliminates farms and farm families. This decline in farming population is reflected in decreasing commercial activity in villages the size of Polk and larger. Where once were numerous Main Street businesses, few survive.

September 25, 1980
"News, News, and News"

The centralization of news-gathering and publishing is as much an abhorrence as concentration of farming into fewer and larger farms, a development we regard as anti-democratic. Just as agriculture in the United States is being industrialized, news-gathering and telling has become an industry. News is big business.

March 13, 1980 "Terrorism"

Terrorism results from desperation. We can recall, as a small boy about the age of the apprentice printer, playing with two boyhood pals, Everett Stouffer and Fredrick Allison. Sometimes, when three are together, two will join forces against one. We became the target of the joint forces of Everett and Fred. We were the youngest and smallest and stoically submitted to the teasing and jostling until suddenly, lashing out with fists and feet and screams, we reestablished our rights and respect. Of course, we didn’t analyze our actions in those terms. We had had enough and can still recall their looks of amazement and disbelief at the small bundle of overt venom they had aroused. We were terror, personified.

By Daniel Cattau

Fort Kearny State Park, Neb.— Thousands of gray-brown sandhill cranes nestle in the shallow expanse of the Platte River, packing into what looks to be a giant sand dune. Scores more are flying in a V-formation over the barren cornfields and winter-bare cottonwood trees. In their return to these ancient nesting grounds, the cranes’ bugle-like cackles seem to mock those dumb beasts with cameras and binoculars standing on an old railroad trestle across the Platte.

Some thoughts on violence and peace October 25, 1973

The Polk Progress was a Nebraska treasure that ceased publication in late 1989 after 82 years as a weekly newspaper. From 1955 until its last issue, the editor and publisher was the late Norris Alfred. In its last few months, the Progress had 900 subscribers in 45 states. Alfred was a remarkable Nebraskan with an uncanny eye for connecting the present with the future.