OPINION | BRENDA LOOPER: Going native
This time of year is bittersweet for me, with so many memories crowding my mind.
This time of year is bittersweet for me, with so many memories crowding my mind.
It's been too long since I've talked about fact-checking, especially one particularly important bit: primary sources.
One of my greatest treasures is a blurry Polaroid of Mom sharing a book with me. We both have on '70s denim and we are pointing to the illustrations on the pag…
Four years ago today, I got a call from my boss saying that we would be out of the office for a while with the majority of the country. Covid-19 had been decla…
Longtime readers know I'm no fan of politics as practiced today, and why would I be, with all the fabulism, division, insults and ignoring of the law that's be…
It shouldn't be the least bit surprising that I'm not the only word nerd who works at the paper. So when a story shows up online using "Woah," someone's going …
So many thoughts have crowded my head over the past week that it's been hard to settle on a topic for this week's column. But because I want to avoid politics …
While others are sending flowers and candy and words of love to their sweethearts today, I share my billet-doux with the world of words.
Rather than expanding on the excellent editorial on the opposite page Tuesday on the subject of a letter printed on this page last Friday, I'm going into word-…
Probably everyone has had to deal with a friend or family member who has given in to conspiracy theories. But where once those truly invested in outlandish tal…
It should come as no surprise that I was a bookish kid. I learned to read before school ever started, partly because I wanted to be able to do what my brothers…
As birthday weekends go, this one wasn't that bad, even with the absence of red velvet cake (dang it). Plus the "Arctic Hammer" (seriously???) waited till my o…
I had a lot to think about over the weekend: what would have been my brother Corey's 60th birthday, the third anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.…
It's happened. One of 2023's words of the year is among those voters picked to be banished in Lake Superior State University's 2024 Banished Words List, releas…
It's the most wonderful time of the year ... for word nerds, anyway.
The Christmas season is hard on a lot of us. Estrangements, deaths, illness, work schedules and other things keep us from feeling very merry.
What happens when you let the public vote on a shortlist of words for word of the year?
There's a danger in writing my column early at this time of year.
I'm sensing a theme here. It's still early days, but thus far with two words of the year announced, artificial intelligence is the through line.
It's been a rough few years for me, with the deaths of loved ones, huge unexpected expenses that sapped my savings, and creeping depression and anxiety. Still,…
Every so often, I feel like I'm living in the "Terminator" universe. Not so much because life is grim (and no, I don't believe unstoppable cyborgs are after me…
Two years ago Sunday, I lost my first best friend. My brother Corey was the closest to my age, and I spent probably the first two years of my life being his sh…
After last week's column about jerks, I feel the need to talk about something good on social media. Mark Zuckerberg/Meta actually did something I like.
It used to be a safe assumption that pretty much everyone's default setting was "kind" and "polite," except for those people who had hatred and malice seeping …
With an actual chill in the air, I can finally say it's autumn, which is one of my favorite times of year, and not just because of the leaves turning and it be…
There are people who will never be happy with anything this or any other responsible newspaper does, and a comment on last week's column was indicative of why.
When I was growing up about 20 miles south of Fort Smith, I had multiple newspapers to choose from: the daily Southwest Times Record, plus the weekly Mansfield…
It's hard sometimes to understand the people who are perpetually ticked off by ... well, let's be honest ... anything that doesn't fit their worldview and/or m…
Sometimes you just need a reminder of what life is, or should be, about.
Is anyone else exhausted, or it is just me?
Editor's note: Brenda Looper usually writes her columns on Mondays, and since this Monday was Labor Day, she decided to take a little break. The original versi…
Civility seems to be the word of the moment, but I can't blame some for being skeptical of calls from certain quarters to be kind in light of current criminal …
In summer, I notice I tend to get stuck on the issue of incivility a lot. I get it, it's hot and we're all cranky (frankly, I worry about some of those people …
Longtime readers know I'm often easily amused, especially when it comes to words. Soooo ... imagine my face when I saw on Facebook the other day a screenshot o…
Sunday afternoon, I headed to the grocery store with a friend so we could get what we each needed for the week. We should have taken what sounded like gunshots…
As much as I sometimes decry social media, I admit there are some accounts that are always worth a follow. For the Word Nerd, following the Merriam-Webster dic…
Friday's storm, while a bit scary at times (it got really dark where I was in midtown Little Rock, so much so that a closet was cleared out and helmets put at …
It's still hot, and that makes me more easily distracted.
My opinion on social media has never really been in doubt if you've read me for very long. While it has great capabilities to bring people together and inspire…
What did I do on the Fourth? Who knows? This was written beforehand and I'm not psychic.
Since summer began (and even before), it has reminded me why it's my least favorite season. The storm Sunday evening, just a few hours after I left a friend's …
After my column last week, a friend emailed to let me know I'd left an important word out of an early paragraph when I was talking about rights and responsibil…
Everyone talks a lot about their rights and what they're entitled to; too few talk about the responsibilities those rights entail.
Any time we head into a month designated for recognition of a specific group (Black History Month, Women's History Month, etc.), there's usually some dissent o…
People may think I exaggerate the effects of politics on our lives. And yet, it's so hard to find an area where it hasn't stuck its grimy fingers. It's worse t…
If you're lucky, you have a lot of friends. If you're very lucky, you have a small group of friends who are more like family than anything else.
Last Wednesday, a friend (I call him Snek Man) DM'd me, quite concerned with what he was seeing on the newspaper's website.
Whataboutism, red herrings, ad hominem attacks and other logical fallacies were alive in the comments that followed my column about recent shootings last week,…
Friday night, about the time I was settling into bed at a friend's house after having enjoyed a night out at Argenta Community Theater's production of "Cindere…
I could probably easily write about the departures of Tucker Carlson from Fox News and Don Lemon from CNN. However, I don't have cable, and even if I did, I wo…