The 47th annual National Polka Festival gets under way in earnest tonight with this year’s King and Queen Dance Contest at the Knights of Columbus Hall. The buzz this year has been building for weeks to an overwhelming roar of enthusiasm for the events of this weekend, and it promises to be a blast this Saturday and Sunday.

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Phil Banker

Covering sports for the past school year has been a blast. I’ve gotten to learn even more about my community, about sports in general and learned a skill I plan to keep using in the future. Part of the fun has been interacting with sports parents, which I assure you has been nothing but a blast and in no way frustrating in the slightest.

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Sure, we would have all preferred that a siren went off and warned us to take cover before the tornado hit, but sometimes Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate with our plans.

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The data gleaned from local polls is not a perfect representation of that disconnect in some areas of town, but it certainly leans in the direction of disengagement in Ward 2 and Ward 4.

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Nick Todaro

Giving Ennis a behind-the-scenes look at a president’s visit to our region of the state was originally something I’d planned to do last week, but then my well-publicized personal injury accident took center stage.

Imagine my surprise when one of the strongest personalities from the memorial event at Baylor University in Waco’s Ferrell Center was arrested last week following the beginning of an investigation into the blast that destroyed West Fertilizer and claimed more than a dozen lives. Bryce Reed memorialized his buddy Cyrus Reed so well, calling him a “brother” who “was on fire for life,” that every journalist in the press risers at the memorial hurriedly jotted down notes, hanging on his well-crafted words.

There are no simple words to express the depth of the relationship between a child and their mother. Nor are there adequate means for many of us to communicate how our love for Mom develops and changes over time, from the capricious flights of youth to the timeworn growth of developed adulthood.

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Tre Bischof

If I could lodge one critique upon Ennis in my four years here, it would be my concern over a lack of public participation in the operation of our town, school system and county.

My belief is this is due to the large burdens many of our jobs place on us each day and the investments we make in our family life.

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Phil Banker

I didn’t catch the game between the Toronto Blue Jays and the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday night, but news of what happened reverberated throughout the internet all night.
A line drive off the bat of Tampa’s Desmond Jennings hit Toronto pitcher J.A. Happ in the head so hard it could be heard from the press box, dropping him to the ground barely moving.

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A perception of behind-closed-doors deal-making hung on some brows, despite the fact almost all of what transpired happened in public meetings open to any interested resident. Generally speaking, all it would take is a little more civic-minded involvement to have averted that feeling entirely.

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