For local readers in Floyd County, you might have read this essay in this week’s paper. Except for the very important “bit.ly bundle” at the end. This was omitted when printed. What can I say? It is sort of important,…
Assured in advance by the region’s soggy-foggy reputation that I would face constant drizzling rain there, I bought the first modern rain-proof garment I’ve ever owned before my May trip to the Olympic Peninsula of Washington. But following the thread…
This selection is from Slow Road Home, written in August 2002, a lament during one of the worst droughts in living memory for the old-timers who live in our part of Floyd County. Hundreds of wells went dry that year.…
In the matter of the mistreatment of animals, there is almost universal condemnation. Such behavior is beyond the limits of what our species ought to do to a living thing. We consider it “inhumane” to torture, abandon or exploit our…
This is the time of year when the early morning hours of browsing, answering emails, researching and blogging are supplanted (nice, seasonally-appropriate verb-pun) by yard and garden work before the sun crests the east ridge and the temps begin to…
We are back from St. Louis with the usual list of traveling mercies and horrors, and trying to catch up with the backside of our task lists. so I will take the easy way out, and post an essay I…
Image via Wikipedia Revolutions and Resolutions in a Bigger-picture New Year January takes its name from Janus, the Roman god of portals, of comings and goings, beginnings and endings–an odd-looking, two-faced deity who looks at once both where he’s been…
Growing up in the Deep South meant dealing with the heat in summer (well actually, from March through October in Alabama.) When we moved north to Virginia in 1974, I thought surely we had left 90-90 temp-humidities behind. But it’s…
At nine o’clock on a warm, calm and fragrant summer night, I am alone at the edge of our pasture, set deep in the fold between steep ridges on the eastern flank of Floyd County. The whites of fleabane, chrysanthemum…
Image by fred1st via Flickr From Road Less Traveled column, Floyd Press, 17 June 2010 Can we sustain in our corner of southwest Virginia those amenities and virtues that make it a highly-livable place? We want to perpetuate the abundance…
We’re being poisoned, and not by our enemies. More than 93% of American men, women and children have this substance in their tissues. Research has linked it to cancer and heart disease, Type-II diabetes, obesity, sexual dysfunction including low sperm…
Image by fred1st via Flickr It isn’t easy in these days of SOLs to stimulate the creative energies of school children. But it does happen. This essay, broadcast at WVTF in April 2010, describes three opportunities I had in 2009…
Image by fred1st via Flickr In the mid 80s, humanity learned a shocking fact that certain chemicals (freons) present in our air conditioning coolants, added as a propellent in household sprays, and produced by certain industrial processes had over the…