Slumped in the waiting room chair, I dreaded the receptionist calling my name. Actually, I was hoping and praying she would not call my name, that somehow I had the wrong day or the wrong place, that the whole thing was a bad dream. I was there for a root canal. A root canal is a dental procedure used to salvage what remains of dead or dying teeth, or to extract information. Concerning discomfort, it falls somewhere between a beheading and having a hot needle poked in your eye.

Wow, it’s been hot in our neck of the woods. You know it’s going to be a scorcher when the thermometer hits 90 degrees before our mailman runs—usually around 10 a.m. Farmers are smiling ear to ear making hay while this incredible drying season covers our region yet worrying all the while if this weather is an indication of another dry season ahead.

The bottle on my desk is blue and white with bold red print. It contains 8 oz. of a mysterious liquid, the ingredients of which I can hardly pronounce much less reprint here. I have never seen a product label exactly like this one. It reads “Wash Away Your Sins Hand Cleanser.”

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.“
—Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), American author, humorist, newsman and raconteur.

At 18, I would never have agreed with Brother Twain. Now that I am far closer to 80 than 18, I agree with him wholeheartedly. Ordinarily, this would be my favorite time of year, late spring, early summer, the time when a young man was just tuning up for a summer full of fun.

Don’t feed the bears.
Sounds easy enough, but apparently not everyone’s getting the message.

Graduation season; it’s ¬a time when millions of graduates of all ages joyfully accept their diplomas, transfer their tassels, and offer a big sigh of relief thinking that they’ve arrived, their journey is almost complete. They think that life can’t get any better, but it does.

When the minister arrived at the nursing home, he found his parishioner sitting alone in her room. “I am worried sick,” the 95-year-old woman explained. Trying to pinpoint the source of her anxiety, her minister began to question the woman.

Piney and She were amused at a news program on CBS and also on BBC that remodeling was to be done at Trinity Church at Stratford Upon Avon, the church where Shakespeare was buried.

Spring fever, spring training, spring cleaning—regardless of what you call it, spring has finally sprung and many of us are running on all six cylinders.

She’s only 10, but, man, is she full of wisdom.