My father brought my sister a bike home in the back seat of the tan Oldsmobile when I wasn’t quite 5 years old.
She was 9 and I think it might have been her first bike. It was a girls bike, with a banana seat and little iridescent streamers poking from the handlebars.

Drug reps deliver the goods

Ghost hunters converged onto the Major Grahams Mansion in Wythe county searching for spirit activity last month.
The historical property located in Grahams Forge has many folklore stories that make it a prime spot for possible paranormal activity.

It’s all the government’s fault.
Most of the time, hearing that all-too familiar cry, we cringe. We don’t necessarily believe that the government owes us anything or should provide us anything other than a few basic freedoms, such as the right to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. The freedom to worship or not worship as we so choose. Those sorts of things. The government isn’t to blame when it does what it’s supposed to do. And there lies the problem.

It’s tempting not to issue this plea. There’s a genuine sense of futility about sending it out. Every year we encourage voters to cast their ballots on Election Day. Unfortunately, the message, which also comes from many other sources, goes unheeded by an alarming number of people.

Fighting with faith and fists—Part II

What’s under your bed?

Walking the walkways

My neighbors Laird and Sylvia smiled at me with sunny enthusiasm, as we stood in their yard on a September Saturday. I was feeling daunted because of the latest commercial threat to some-beloved-place. In this case, our own neighborhood in Wytheville, where a developer was proposing to build a Walgreens one block upstream along the creek that runs through my yard.

Walgreens got NIMBY’d.
Its fatal mistake was not finding out whose backyard it wasn’t wanted in.
But it found out Monday as state Delegate Anne B. Crockett-Stark joined a chorus of residents from her neighborhood in opposing the drugstore’s plans.