Raves, rants and reality

I wish you all a wholehearted “Hey there and welcome to my little corner of the paper.” We’re going to have a lot of fun here, I promise.

Please email me at [email protected] with any of your own raves, rants or reality issues that you want to share. I will do my best to look into all the suggestions you send me and then I’ll post my opinions here. Except pokemon; I’m not searching for your pokemon. Pretty much anything else you want me to look into is open for consideration.

I’m sure many of you remember me from growing up here but for those of you who do not know me, here is a little about Ms. Aleta.

I was born in Sidney, but my family moved here in the summer of 1971. My parents are Stan and the late Beverly Pearson, They lived here for just about 45 years before moving to Callaway, Nebr. last fall. Now that my mother has passed on, my father will be moving back to Kimball, hopefully by the end of August. I am so thrilled with this because, well, as those of you who know me will attest, I’ve always been a daddy’s girl and I really miss him.

I graduated from Kimball County High in 1987, went to college at UNK and UNC in Greeley, Colo., have been married and divorced a few times and have three incredible young men I am blessed to call my children.

Although I’ve been artistic all my life and most of you know of this, what you probably did not know is that I’ve always loved to write stories and poetry. This winter I wrote every chance I could get and had nearly 50,000 words into a novel when an electrical storm wiped out my Mac. Lesson learned, I now save to the cloud.

Years ago, I started a blog that lasted about seven years where I wrote about healthy vegetarian living.

Now, for my first RAVE… I’m calling them ‘summer in a copper mug’ better known as the orange flavored Moscow mules at the Windbreak Bar & Grill. I’ve been a fan of the original version since I first discovered it while living in Lincoln and working at Brewsky’s Food & Spirits but when the bar manager of the Windbreak, Ashley Tucker, made me one last week, she changed my world. I’m serious.

I also want to rave about the compassion I’ve heard from so many locals about the people who were hit by the storms last week. It’s truly heartwarming to know that people actually still care about their neighbors.

Here is my current RANT… I heard someone talk about this last week and every since then I cannot get it out of my head, I want to play BINGO. Maybe I’m getting old or maybe it’s just that I’d like to get together with people at a long table, talking about our kids, grandkids, gardens, dogs and stamping the heck out of a bunch of little white cards with the possibility of winning $10. Am I the only one? The definition of ‘reality’ according to Google is, “the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.”

My REALITY is actually a continuation on the same line of thought to my rant and it is a simple question to ya’ll. Are you concerned about the state of community involvement and businesses (or lack of businesses) in Kimball? I know I am. The thought of closing the swimming pool, or losing our recycling program through Keep Kimball Beautiful or cutting our police force to balance the city budget or whatever the issue is, makes me sick to my stomach. When I looked into the community garden and found that only one couple was using it I was shocked. I may not have kids in school anymore but what if I did. What would my children have to do in our town. What do I have to do? I’m just as guilty as the majority of you out there. We look the other way, we are ‘too busy’ with our own lives, families and jobs. We go out of town on weekends to shop, have a Starbucks, see a movie, spend our money outside of the city that we supposedly call home. Let’s look at it another way… by spending money outside of Kimball we are padding the savings account of people that live outside our community. Are we really ‘saving’ for our children’s futures by spending our money outside of ‘our town’? I am a concerned citizen and I’m a bit freaked out. Are you yet?

Email your raves about our town to [email protected]. Share your thoughts with me on how to improve our town and to correct our rants. Let’s change our reality and make Kimball the place we admit is our town.