My last conversation with Grandpa was over the phone. He was sick and dying. I was 1,200 miles away in residency, learning how to be a family physician. I was not going to make it home in time to see him one last time.

Memorial Day began in the years after the Civil War, when it was originally called “Decoration Day.” At the first official celebration of this holiday in 1868, then-Congressman James A. Garfield, who would become our 20thpresident, said in a speech at Arlington National Cemetery that those who gave their lives for our country “summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens.”

Through the years, the Good Life has been forged by pioneers and entrepreneurs in search of opportunities. They put down roots and built welcoming communities that created great jobs for families looking to make a new start. Along the way, Nebraska’s love and respect for law and order has made our state great. Our state motto is “equality before the law” – and we live by this principle by fairly and consistently applying the law to everyone.

We all know the feeling. You ate too much, and now your stomach is letting you know about it. Or maybe you ate some junk food, and now you don’t feel well. How is it that another slice of pizza one moment seems like exactly what we want, but later we realize it was not what we needed?

As most of you are reading this we will be on our last day of the One Hundred Seventh Legislature, First Session. We pushed ourselves hard at the end to pass as many priority bills as possible. As most of you know the legislature works in a twoyear cycle and we’re in the first session, so that means that all of the bills that were introduced this year that were not either signed into law or IPP (killed) will be back next year. The 2022 session will be our short session and we will only meet for 60 days beginning in early January and ending sometime in later April.

May 17, 2021 The weatherman smiled kindly on us for what for many, was graduation weekend. The first part of the week has been drippy, but guess we’ll take it.

From the 1940s until 1999, all quarters looked essentially the same. The U.S. Mint had been using the same design on every new quarter for more than 60 years – George Washington on one side, and a bald eagle on the other.

Back pain can be disabling, not only in terms of employment but also in terms of social connections. This point was never more clear to me than when I saw Maria, a 56-year-old experiencing severe low back pain for nearly five years. The pain prevented her from standing or walking for more than five minutes at a time and had cost her the job she loved. Maria shared with me her one heart-wrenching goal; she wanted to hold her first grandchild, a six-month-old baby boy. Doing so had caused pain so intense it put her in bed for a full day afterwards.

We are in the home stretch of wrapping up this first session of the 107th Legislature and it certainly has felt like an extra long session. The Speaker of the Legislature has announced that the last day will likely be May 27th. There are still several bills yet to be addressed this session and we will continue to work on them until the end. My colleagues and I will be back sometime this fall for a special session to address redistricting, but I think we are all ready for the lull in-between and I am certainly ready to get back home on the farm.

Annually, my wife and I have to cram some sort of anniversary "celebration" in however we can. May 5 is an easy anniversary date for me to remember, but it's easy to get lost in the shuffle of graduations, school activities, little league firing up, yard work to do, livestock chores and whatever else a person finds on their list in early May.