As the Lincoln Journal Star reported on Monday, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is looking at allowing alcohol again in state parks, a move that would end a ban enacted in 1995. The commission wouldn’t be giving drinkers free rein, though: It would still ban alcohol in swimming areas, roads and parking lots; bringing [...]

Earlier this week, the great rural blog The Daily Yonder posted a cool map of government data of average compensation in rural counties (includes wages, employer contributions for pension plans, insurance plans, government social insurance and bonuses). Here’s the post and a larger version of the map. The data is from 2008, which might be a [...]

A list of less well-known places to visit in Central Nebraska.

Small towns are rightly known for their kindness, but they also have a real susceptibility to cliquishness, to wariness of outsiders, and that’s something that has to be overcome if they are to attract new people to live there.

The crane migration in Central Nebraska is virtually unique — one of the Plains’ signature natural events. It draws observers from around the country and the world, yet relatively few from our own area.

Aventine Renewable Energy has announced its plans to finish the Aurora West ethanol plant sometime in 2011.

I have apparently become the gatherer of Central Nebraska top-story lists. NTV ran its top 10 stories of the year over the weekend, and I thought it might be interesting to get another perspective on the issue. NTV, which is based in Axtell, covers a larger area than the Independent, including Kearney and a quite a few [...]

Looking for the area’s story of the decade? A few stories were longer-lasting than others: Ethanol has appeared on every top 10 list since 2001, the Comstock music festivals appeared in five years, school bonds appeared in four years, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan appeared in three years.

Could tolls be down the road for Nebraska? A new study says they could be an answer for the state’s roads funding shortfall. The Platte Institute for Economic Research, a fiscally conservative thinktank based in Omaha, released a study last week calling for Nebraska officials to look at public-private partnerships  (read: toll roads) to help the state [...]

In this month’s Essent (PDF – it’s on page 6), the newsletter of the Nebraska Municipal Power Pool, I ran across some fun little factoids that illustrate just how closely linked many Nebraska towns are with their railroad-generated past. Corrinne Pedersen, NMPP Energy’s manager of member development, noted a few Nebraska towns named after railroad [...]