Category: Opinion

Opinion

The morning after the election

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

The morning after the election, I took a walk. The dark computer screen across the room beckoned me to waggle the mouse and wake it …

My mom is kind of a big deal

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

There’s not enough room on this page — maybe even in this paper — to adequately praise or even describe my mom. She’s kind of …

TV moms got nothing on the real thing

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

A significant portion of my formative years were spent watching television families. As a child whose parents both worked full time to ensure my two …

Passenger seat past

By Lyndsie Kiebert-Carey
Reader Staff

It is a spring evening, nearing sunset, after a warm day. The smell of sun-baked lakebed and blooming skunk cabbage fills the car, carried by …

The small, good things

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

Every job has its stresses, no matter if you’re the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the dishwasher in a small-town diner. 

Journalism is …

Setting the record straight on wolves

By Don Gay
Reader Contributor

In my opinion, the Reader opinion article on wolf trapping [“Trapping is a legal, useful tool to manage wolf populations,” March 31, 2022, by Eric …

Hot take on Earth Day

By Kelsey Maxwell
Reader Contributor

My childhood “wild place” was nowhere near extraordinary by an outdoor enthusiasts’ standard. It was a truly tiny strip of forest between my best friend’s …

Farewell Mr. Marker

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

It’s common for people to point to “that one teacher” who made a big impact on them when they were young. I’ve been lucky to …

Letters

  • Informative Series… Dear Editor, Many thanks to Ben Olson and the rest of the Reader staff for their very informative series on the Redoubt movement. Surprisingly I realize that I actually agree with some of what the Redoubters stand for: keeping government for the people and by the people, and by people I ...
  • Cross Words… Dear Editor, This is meant as a heads up to our community, and I hope will be taken in the context which it is written. Let’s start a dialogue this year regarding gender shaming words. I picked up a copy of the Reader last week and started to do the crossword puzzle ...
  • Response to Mr. Weins… Dear Editor, The author of the second article on page 7 (Herb Weins, Reader 12-21-17 issue) makes numerous irrational statements and comparisons. 1: “We have been exporting high-quality blue collar jobs out of the country for decades.” How does a smelter job qualify as a high-quality blue collar job, given the extreme working ...
  • Us vs. Them, Or Just Us… Dear Editor, Albert Einstein once observed: “If we keep doing what we’ve been doing, we keep getting what we’ve been getting.” Oh my! So if “what we’ve been doing” is “us versus them,” how’s that working for us? It seems what we’ve been getting is thousands of years of division, fear, hate, ...
  • Say Yes to Post-secondary Education… Dear Editor, A recent Gallup poll found that 58 percent of registered Republicans believe college has a negative effect on our society. I do not believe this nor do I think most Idaho Republicans, Independents and Democrats believe this. We believe that college education is the principal driver of social and ...
Close [x]

Want to support independent local journalism?

The Sandpoint Reader is our town's local, independent weekly newspaper. "Independent" means that the Reader is locally owned, in a partnership between Publisher Ben Olson and Keokee Co. Publishing, the media company owned by Chris Bessler that also publishes Sandpoint Magazine and Sandpoint Online. Sandpoint Reader LLC is a completely independent business unit; no big newspaper group or corporate conglomerate or billionaire owner dictates our editorial policy. And we want the news, opinion and lifestyle stories we report to be freely available to all interested readers - so unlike many other newspapers and media websites, we have NO PAYWALL on our website. The Reader relies wholly on the support of our valued advertisers, as well as readers who voluntarily contribute. Want to ensure that local, independent journalism survives in our town? You can help support the Reader for as little as $1.