Category Potpourri

Friday Shorts

* Coldest day of the year so far, but a dry cold, and though I will have to start warming up the car at 7 to get to work by 8, I think I’ll get there just fine. I left…

Friday Fragments

Yes, this is the same old apple tree that appeared a few days ago in a more artsy black and white impression. The lichens that decorate its dying branches give it a kind of surreal luminance and false life. *…

Those Look Lyke Cumftubble Shoes

Granted, I didn’t know where I was going yesterday afternoon. Originally, the meeting was scheduled for the Winston Link Museum, but nobody there knew anything about it. A phone call found out that the writers’ meeting had been rescheduled for…

Wimpy Winter

No, this isn’t from THIS so-called winter. We did get a skiff of snow yesterday, and there might be a trace of white this morning when the sun comes up. But so far, even though we’re 200% of normal moisture…

And So It Goes

“Ann, you should see some of the great suggestions Fragments readers are offering for the lead-in and byline fade-out for the radio essay” I told her yesterday morning. “Like what?” she wanted to know. “Well, like Stranger on the Shore.…

Musical Bookends Needed!

Okay, Fragmented Few, here’s an opportunity to pool your collective nostalgia and set the musical score. The situation: on Saturday at the Roanoke NPR station, I recorded a shortened version of the Reunion piece posted here a while back. Dutchie…

Sand in the Gears

Technology. Bah! Humbug. It’s down a few notches on my list of the Wonders of our Age. Sometimes I wonder how things would be without so much of it intruding into our dreams and waking hours. But then, I’ve just…

HWA

Here’s what the HWA (Hemlock Wooly Adelgid) is doing to our forest. Have you noticed?

Mixed Nuts

NOAA Wx Radio’s Greatest Hits We call him Jose because he seems to have a south-of-the-border ESL quality to his robot speech as he reads the weather synopsis, forecast or current readings of conditions around the area. He came out…