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Don’t miss local youth fairs

If you’re ready for an extravaganza of food and family fun as well as 4-H and FFA spirit, the Mifflin County Youth Fair is the place for you. The Juniata County Youth Fair just ended, and now their counterparts from Mifflin County are preparing to take their place in the spotlight. It officially opens on Monday and runs until Saturday, Aug. 10. If you haven’t gone, you’re really missing it. 4-H members not only actively engage in a variety of activities that showcase their skills and projects, but it provides them with an opportunity to present what they worked on for the past ...

Don’t trust our digital world

The latest theft of digital information is massive beyond scale. AT&T has reported that hackers stole six months’ worth of call and text message records of nearly every AT&T cellular network customer. This breach has the potential to reveal sensitive information about millions and millions of Americans. The data contains records of calls and texts between approximately May 1 and Oct. 31, 2022, and on Jan. 2, 2023. The company insists that the content of the calls and messages was not compromised and customers’ personal information was not accessed. Yeah, ...

Seek togetherness, not violence

For as much as our culture likes to hold itself as above political violence, people historically sure do a lot of it. The horrendous attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump, as he campaigned in Butler, Pa. — nearly three hours to our west, just north of Pittsburgh — is another wretched entry to an equally wretched list. Political violence extends beyond presidents and candidates, of course — consider the shooting of Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise and the assault of Paul Pelosi, both among recent examples. In 2022, a man paused and called the police on himself ...

Local athletes close to representing the US

As the Olympic flame ignites in Paris, a spark of pride burns brightly in Mifflin County. The 2024 Summer Games mark a milestone for our community, with two local athletes coming tantalizingly close to representing the United States on the world stage. Skylar Ciccolini, a name familiar to many in Lewistown, showcased her prowess in the women’s javelin at the Olympic trials. The former Mifflin County High School standout hurled her way to a tenth-place finish, demonstrating the fruits of years of dedication and training. While narrowly missing the cut for Team USA, Ciccolini’s ...

Medicare needs to offer explanation

At the time when Congress launched the Medicare Advantage program concept several decades ago, the theory in place was insurers would make Medicare more efficient, have an incentive to keep patients healthier and probably save money for the government in the process. Those at the forefront of promoting the concept at that time probably never in their wildest dreams anticipated that one day a major, well-respected national newspaper would have on its front page the headline “Medicare paid $50 billion to insurers for untreated ills.” Yet that was the headline in the July 9 edition ...

Remember a hero

There is an adage, popularized by children’s TV show host Fred Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ ” When a would-be assassin attempted to take the life of former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a week ago in Butler Township, the community in western Pennsylvania tragically lost the life of one such helper. “Corey Comperatore’s quick decision to use his body as a shield against the bullets flying toward his wife and ...