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Bolivar Herald-Free Press more

Bolivar Herald-Free Press more

Citizens Memorial Hospital and Pleasant Hope Family Medical Center welcome Kristin L. Waugh, FNP-C, to the medical staff. more

Monday, Jan. 1 — Close. Happy New Year. more

Bolivar: more

Citizens Memorial Hospital and CMH Rheumatology and Osteoporosis Center welcome Justin W. Reed, D.O., to the medical staff. more

Citizens Memorial Hospital’s Addiction Recovery Program is featured in the online Rural Health Information Hub as a successful model for rural health care. more

New York has it all: bright city lights, famous people, glamour, and iconic events. Every year, millions of tourists descend on the Big Apple, with an estimated 63 million expected this year alone. The holidays are a popular time to visit with the New Year's Eve party in Times Square being world-famous. Yet, every year from mid-November to early January, approximately 2 million people flock to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes. Their renowned Christmas performances can cost up to $500/person, and many would say it is worth every penny. What many do not realize is that those iconic dancing ladies got their start here in humble Missouri. more

Upcoming Library Events: Dec. 20-27 more

The Christmas tree is a quintessential part of holiday decor. I remember my mom’s trees were always showpieces; our Victorian-styled house had a coinciding evergreen bejeweled in beautiful white lights and delicate ornaments that took her days to arrange just right. She then got ambitious and decided our lodge-style den needed an equally elaborate tree with bears and moose adorning every branch. One was the fun tree, the other was the fancy tree, but both were always the focal points of our home. more

Show us what you love about Polk County! more

Citizens Memorial Hospital has received the American College of Cardiology’s NCDR Chest Pain – MI Registry Platinum Performance Achievement Award for 2023. CMH is one of only 262 hospitals nationwide and one of 16 in Missouri to receive the honor. more

The pandemic - the term conjures so many mixed emotions, most of which are not positive. Yet, there were instances of silver linings that developed from the fear and trepidation of such uncertain times. I remember people in Europe creating mini chorus lines from their windows - people singing in harmony showing camaraderie and providing bits of peace for each other. Not every good deed was highly publicized, with many flying under the radar; instances abound of neighbor helping neighbor with small tokens of assistance or comfort for people they usually did not associate with. To borrow from Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” more

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Monday, Dec. 18 — Smothered chicken breast, rice, country mix veggies, biscuit, pears more

Christmas movies come in all styles, forms, and qualities. People like to feel a certain way during the holidays. They want joy. They want fun. They want to escape the quagmire that is the everyday world, even if just for a few moments. Christmas movies, in all their cheesy wholesomeness, provide that siesta from life’s doldrums. Luckily for all the holiday movies junkies, there are enough to keep you binge-watching into the yuletide. I have the ones close to my heart. The newest version of The Grinch, voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch always gets me smiling. I love any Christmas Carol movie. My guilty pleasure is the Muppet version that combines the ridiculousness of the Muppets with the dead-pan seriousness of Michale Caine’s Scrooge. more

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I have never liked parades - there I said it. I know they are a staple of small town, Midwest America and it is one of the aspects that make me a bit of an outsider around here; this town loves a good parade. I admit, I have avoided them, forgotten about them, gone out of town when they occurred, locked myself in my house, and done just about anything to stay away from the crowded streets filled with gaudy decorated vehicles and people walking by waving at strangers. I guess it is one of the Grinch-like, bah-humbug aspects of my personality, all the cheer and inconvenience of blocked roads just were not my thing! In all fairness, I blame my equally bah-humbug mother. She thought parades were boring so I never went to them and in turn inherited her disdain for watching people walk in straight lines in front of me. So naturally, I decided to participate in one. more

The Polk County University of Missouri Extension will be sponsoring a Beginning Beekeeping Workshop at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 11. It will be held at the Polk County Fairgrounds Activities building, 4560 S. 100th Road, Bolivar. There is no charge for the workshop. more

Monday, Dec. 11 — Celebration day, beef vegetable soup, side salad, hoagie roll, ice cream. more

Dear Editor— more

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Monday, Dec. 4 — Goulash, green beans, wheat roll, cherry Jell-O with whipped cream. more

The term “Black Friday” has a sordid past with a bit of a dark connotation. Though many believe it is the day for stores to turn their red ledgers to black, the first use of the term was in 1869 to describe the gold market crash of September. Jump ahead about 90 years and Black Friday was a term dubbed by the Philidelphia police to describe the absolute chaos in the streets on the day after Thanksgiving. As many people went to the annual Navy-Army football game, others made it their day for shopping excursions to kick off the holiday season. It was not a term to describe fun, savings, or festivities. It was a term to describe misery and frustration. As a child of the 80s and 90s, when Black Friday shopping was at its peak, the moniker may have still held its original meaning. more