5th annual

Local library entertaining children

Cogno’s Corner

The presentations were unique, creative and elaborate. They included cakes with ice cream toppings, a trifle resembling a potted plant complete with trowel and garden gloves, cookies peeking from a parfait glass and breads cradled in decorative baskets.

My sister reminded my wife a few weeks ago that it was our anniversary. I think she said something along the lines of, “What did you all do for your anniversary?”
My wife, who, as had I, had forgotten, probably said something like, “nothing.” I would have made up some fantastic lie and then sworn to it till the day I died. Had she asked me, I would have told her we flew to Italy, bought an estate and gave the kids to a needy family down the street. Answers like that are the reason no one in my family ever asks me any questions. 

Gov. Tim Kaine recently told a group of reporters that he still plans to launch a universal, non-mandatory pre-kindergarten program, and, he said, he’ll do it without raising taxes. Great. A pre-kindergarten program, one of the issues that helped Kaine move into the governor’s mansion, is one that should be addressed. But how does Kaine propose we pay for it if not with tax hikes?

Crouching in his grandmother’s yard, 4-year-old Chance Gregory rubs his hands along the chain of a black tricycle. Beaming, he bares his greasy black palms for his mother to see.
“He wants to be a mechanic like his daddy,” Kimberly Gregory said from the porch. She stands and fetches a rag from inside the house.
Gregory grew up in the sagging mobile home across the street. It’s so dilapidated that two years ago her mother had to move in with her mother when the home caught fire and the floor caved in. Her mother says there are 36 years of memories in that home.
Gregory says tear it down.

Shannon Simpson always thought a newspaper story about her horse breeding operation would begin by asking: “What are those horses beside the Chilhowie post office?”
And so it does.

Dave Hauver spent six months in 2005 through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. He took with him a digital video camera “just to see what might happen,” he said this week.
Making a film about his trip was perhaps in the back of his mind, but he said, “It was all about the hike. If I got enough for a film, great.”

26.2 miles equals a running marathon, then surely tasting 26 pound cakes qualifies as an eating marathon. Three judges proved up the task Friday morning at the Rural Retreat fairgrounds as they nibbled their way through the assortment of cakes in an effort to find the best of the best.