In my hometown of Waterloo, our city’s Human Rights Commission “held a press conference Tuesday responding to flyers distributed in Waterloo and Evansdale earlier this month asking people to join a neo-Nazi group” according to the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier. “Papers from the Aryan Freedom Network were placed on doorsteps by disguised individuals around 1 a.m.…
Category: Gary Kroeger
Be The Light
This article is very personal, perhaps uncomfortably so. It’s a subject where there are no happy stories. It is about suicide. Suicide is on the rise. Globally there are now a million suicide deaths annually. National statistics show a 125 percent rise in the past decade, and locally we have seen an increase. According to…
An Ice Cream Cone, Please. Skip the Cone.
I’ve been working at Tropical Smoothie for two months now and the joy I find in the experience has not faded one bit. Granted I spent 3 weeks of those 8 in Scotland with my wife, and I only work in the morning before the consistently crazy lunch rush, but going in at 6:00 am…
A Shot Across The Bow
The most insidious, long-term, result of this Republican sweep through our legislative waters will not be the dismantling or reduced funding of public institutions designed to protect the average American, like the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy and the Department of Health and Human Resources,…
An Open Letter to the Right
Dear Right Wing, I’d like to come to an understanding. I realize there isn’t much motivation on your part since you’ve pretty much swept the halls of legislation with your own and even the Supreme Court has admitted to carrying the torch for conservative values, but in the event that things don’t go swimmingly; if…
Gary Does Have Issues
The following is an interview I gave after the election to a journalism student at City University, New York. His questions were precise and allowed me to answer very spontaneously and without filter. CUNY: As someone who looks for political patterns what do you think led to the rise of Trump back in 2016? Kroeger:…
A View to a Kilt
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil…
8 Score and 1 year ago…
In 1863 President Abraham Lincoln gave an address at the dedication of the Gettysburg battlefield in order to reframe the cause of the Civil War. Of course, we all know of the eloquent 272-word Gettysburg Address that deserves its place as perhaps the most inspirational call to unite under a national purpose ever conceived. He…
The Age(ism) of Reason
It’s easy to attach an “ism” to any obstacle we come across in our lives where we perceive something inherent to our being as a factor used against us. It’s easy, and very likely, correct. Not always, but when it comes to our own lives we take our advantages and disadvantages quite seriously. We are naturally inclined to see what obstacles lie before…
Peel, baby, peel! (What I learned from carrots)
As I have recently posted, I’ve been working, in retirement, at a Tropical Smoothie for several weeks. My early impressions are a melding of delight and holy-mother-of-God-what-have-I-gotten-into? Breezy mornings of prep are sometimes disrupted by 10 cars anxiously waiting on their morning smoothie fix and a breakfast item that comes with a zillion options made…