Skip to Main Content
The community newspaper for Solon

Solon Economist

The community newspaper for Solon

Solon Economist

The community newspaper for Solon

Solon Economist

Opinion | Hot summer afternoons in the 1940’s

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought July 9, 2025

On hot afternoons, long before television and air conditioned homes, we'd dig out the left-over school supplies and play “School” on the shady screened-in front porch. The list of required school...

Opinion | When July 4th meant homemade ice cream

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought July 1, 2025

My dad had a pretty sizable sweet tooth and that meant dessert with every meal – including breakfast. This was probably because, when he was a kid, the family ran a small grocery store and he and his...

Opinion | Thoughts on punctuation, spelling and grammar

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought June 25, 2025

It has been several years since I lost a dear friend who once taught rhetoric at the University of Iowa. She told me that one of the first things she did in every class was to write on the chalkboard...

Opinion | Where did that come from? Just wondering

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought June 17, 2025

Most of us have three different vocabularies suited for different levels of communication. The largest and most sophisticated is usually the one we understand more than we use, developed through the...

Opinion | Understanding bullies and bribes, liars and intuition

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought June 11, 2025

In my early school days, there were a lot of kids who hadn't a clue about acceptable behavior in social situations. There were no preschools in those days, in fact, kindergarten was new and not required...

Opinion | Why, oh, why do I do it?

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought June 10, 2025

Somebody asked me why I became a columnist rather than, say, a poet, novelist or children's author. The first answer that comes to mind is, “Almost by accident.” As an artist, I tried to sell some...

Commencement; the end and the beginning

Milli Gilbaugh, Solon Economist May 21, 2025

May of 1952, the year I graduated from high school, is a blur in my memory. So many new and unexpected “firsts” happening too fast. Several weeks before, I'd happened to see a notice on the bulletin...

Gardening; tongue-in-cheek

Milli Gilbaugh May 14, 2025

During the 1970's and 80's, Crockett's Victory Garden was a popular program on IPTV. Broadcast, I think, on Sunday afternoons, we watched it nearly every week and learned a lot of valuable things about...

A lawmaker’s blatant overreach as he ignores Iowa law  

Randy Evans May 14, 2025

At least one member of the Iowa House appears to live by the mantra “Do as I say, not as I do” as he demands access to sensitive personal information and commands silence as he trolls for documents. The...

May babies and other good things

Milli Gilbaugh May 6, 2025

My mother said that spring babies were “better” babies, easier to care for, generally healthier, and good-natured, all because of the extended sunshine of summer days. My older sister was born in November...

Opinion | My mother called it May Basket Day

Milli Gilbaugh, Food for Thought April 30, 2025

On the last day of April, we hurried home from school, changed from our school dresses to slacks and sweaters and piled into the car armed with empty jars, several pop bottles filled with water and a...

Food for Thought | The horticultural evolution — from survival to recreation

Milli Gilbaugh April 23, 2025

I was more than a little surprised when I began to realize that gardening has evolved from a necessity to a pastime in the span of just a couple generations. A century ago, when our nation was still...

Load More Stories