Doug Wingeier • Columnist

My oh my! Looks like the long arm of Israeli surveillance has reached out to us way down here in the mountains of Western North Carolina (see column to the left). I hadn’t thought the experience of a peace-loving octogenarian professor worthy of such attention. But I do appreciate the opportunity to respond.

SEE: Columnist’s anti-Israel tirade distorts truth

What I wrote in that Dec. 25 column was mainly an account of what I personally have seen and experienced in the “land of the Holy One” — not an exercise in ideology or biblical interpretation. In addition to what I mentioned, I have personally experienced the following:

In numerous newspapers in late November 2013, it was reported that six U.S. Forest Service (USFS) employees from Western North Carolina were awarded “Law Enforcement and Investigations Awards” by the USFS for their roles in “Operation Something Bruin,” a four-year, multi-agency investigation targeting bear poachers in Western North Carolina and surrounding states, resulting in arrests in February 2013.

It had also been reported earlier that the National Wildlife Federation bestowed "prestigious conservation honors" on Sgt. Chad Arnold, an officer from Charlotte with the Special Investigations Unit of the N.C. Wildlife Commission. Arnold was named "Wildlife Enforcement Officer of the Year", and the Commission was named the "Natural Resources Agency of the Year," according to a press release from the N.C. Wildlife Commission.

Each new year brings out the list-makers, pundits and critics who catalogue everything from the year’s best movies, books, and music to predictions regarding politics and the economy for the next 12 months. With the exception of composing my own personal lists from the past year — “Ten Things I Would Have Done Differently” would be easily written — I lack the qualifications to compose any sort of compendium, including one for books, for 2013.

Yet I do find myself compelled to make a list of favorite books. Several readers of this column, and many of my students, have over the last years asked for such a list, and I would send them three or four recommendations, selections often plunked down without any real effort or thought. Having pondered the matter this week before the new year, I found myself wondering what I would put on such a list if I was, say, limited to a small shelf of favorite books.

Doug Wingeier • Columnist

Some years back I spent the Christmas season in the Land of the Holy One. (It is not the land that is holy, but the One who was born, lived, died, and rose there.) This was one of my several sojourns in Israel/Palestine over the years. My strongest impression at that time (and conditions have only gotten worse since) was of the oppression my Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters — along with their Muslim neighbors — were enduring under the Israeli occupation. I was struck with how similar this was to the Roman oppression of local inhabitants in the time of Jesus.

John Beckman • Columnist

The discussions and debates regarding health care on both the local and national levels have been going on for years as people everywhere have tried to come to grips with rapidly rising costs, a huge number of uninsured people and loss of benefits from  providers. The volume of the discourse has risen to screaming new levels since the passing of the national Affordable Care Act and the botched launch of the website enrollment in recent weeks. The controversy has given rise to many instant geniuses on both sides with much of the opinion being offered short on fact, insight or applicability to the real world the rest of us inhabit. 

What seems to be missing in all this is addressing the underlying question: How does our great nation get health services to those who need it in an affordable, efficient, ethical manner?

I was trying to sell myself to my prospective new boss, Scott McLeod. I may not know anyone in the Haywood County area yet, I told him, but don’t worry — I’m a horse person. We have a network. 

So as soon as I knew I’d been hired, I got in touch with all the horse people I’d met with connections in this part of the world. My old friend Katherine, who grew up riding ponies in Asheville, put me in touch with Connie Moore, a fellow-rider who lives in Haywood County. Maybe you know Connie. I got on the phone with her and quickly got all sorts of great advice about boarding barns and other practicalities. 

We are now — officially — barreling into the holidays. Thanksgiving is already a fading, drowsy memory of turkey carcasses and piles of dirty dishes. As we march onward toward Christmas and the new year, my mind always goes into the same pattern, one I can’t shake: I think of blessings and shortcomings, wondering why the things that aren’t right can’t be righted. 

And so a couple of recent articles about opportunity in this country and how those who come from wealth are more likely than ever in recent history to remain in the upper income brackets hit home. In order to change this, we need to do more for children, especially those who haven’t reached what we have traditionally deemed “school age.”

By Doug Wingeier • Columnist

In early October we spent two weeks in our 150-year-old log cabin situated on a corner of our daughter Ruth and husband John’s 40 acres in central Minnesota, which has no electricity or running water. 

While there we enjoy a simple life — reading by oil lamp and candlelight, outhouse comfort, vegetarian diet, sleeping sundown to sunup. Ruth is a licensed nurse midwife who has delivered more than 2,000 babies (many of them home births) in the 30 years she has lived there. John is recently retired after working as an Alaskan bush pilot, builder and cabinet maker, skilled factory worker, and a math and science teacher. They have raised three boys, the youngest now a college junior.

We had talked about going to Disney World for so long that it had become an abstraction, so distant and unreal that we might as well have been talking about taking a trip to Saturn. Still, the notion kept forcing itself upward though our cluttered and chaotic family life and back into our consciousness, like a dandelion that finds a way to grow through a crack in the sidewalk.

I’ve heard all the speeches and read all the legislative fantasies, and I’m still not satisfied with what I’ve heard about the state of the schools. The stories don’t match.

One question I cannot get the answer to is this: is the figure used by the state legislature for school budget before or after the reversion monies? When did the reversions start? Why?