A family member sent a picture this morning of an apple pie with two “pie birds” embedded in the upper crust. (I learned they are also called “crustholders” because another function other than venting steam from the pie is that…
Floyd Press / Road Less Traveled for November 1, 2007 Ignaz Semmelweis is hardly a house-hold name, but trust me: the practice that he recommended for hospital maternity wards more than a hundred and fifty years ago we have recently…
It has been in use for more than 5000 years: for wrappings of mummies; for the earliest written pages and today, the very best painting canvases. It’s fibers are so strong (three times stronger than cotton) that the Greeks used…
But it is a choice. So ends a very thought provoking Message in a Bottle by Charles Fishman and published in FastCompany more than a month ago. I ended up writing “Missing the Water: Now” for the Floyd Press column…
Sometimes it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. And other times, it’s best to keep the dogs out from under the table and on the outskirts of the village entirely. In this case, probably the latter choice would have made…
Now, there were the Brown Mountain Lights back between Linville and Morganton in NC where we used to live, but locally, I’m fresh outta ghost stories. If you have any, send them along and I’ll get them to the authors…
This morning, just hours from now, I’ll be speaking to an audience far younger than my usual. I want to tell them about the creative energy they can pour into writing. I want them to know how important it is…
From the Floyd Country Store Friday, August 31, 2007–a typical kind of shot of folks clapping, dancing, listening to the music, people-watching, enjoying themselves. I held the camera as high as I could and pressed the shutter, accepting whatever the…
Ann and I are blessed in that we have come no closer to violence in our lives than that which was recently visited upon the son of our friends. This young man was wounded by the gunman on the Virginia…
Woody Crenshaw–no absentee landlord–presides over the evening’s music and dance at the Floyd Country Store. Here, he presents a Country Store cap to the visitor from farthest away. On this particular evening–as has been true I think every time I’ve…
I ain’t saying…just listen carefully in the weeks ahead. You might hear the neocons rumbling to “bring it on”. Again. From George Packer at The New Yorker If there were a threat level on the possibility of war with Iran,…
Ann and I are young-old by today’s standards. She indulges herself in denial of the time we will be middle-age old, and old-old. At some time in that continuum, we will be obliged to consider while yet living to live…
Calling for no conservation measures that might obviate the mandate for ever more coal use into the foreseeable future, this abrogation of the “Stream Buffer Zone Rule” gives Big Coal access to anything it wants, any way it wants to…
This was the scene on 221 Saturday afternoon. This tractor caravan suddenly appeared over the crest of the highway (viewed first from Sweet Providence’s cool porch shade, see Doug’s picture) and went on for quite a while. I thought at…