My annual battle with the grass is under way.
Just a day or so ago I waded through embarrassingly high, hip high in places, grass, alternately pushing and dragging a mower. In fairness to me, I had mowed the half acre immediately around the house. So this wasn’t my first time on the lawn. It was, however, the first time that really counted, the first time I mowed everything, or nearly everything, I’ve got to mow. 

Sunday, May 11, is Mother’s Day, the annual day to honor and celebrate mothers in the United States. According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia (http://www.wikipedia.en), Howe, after seeing the carnage and destruction of the Civil War, became a pacifist. I found this rather strange from a woman who wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Nevertheless, she apparently did and wrote the poem the “Mother’s Day Proclamation” as a call for a Mother’s Day for Peace to be established in the United States.

He was a kind, stately man who carried a dark secret. One would never suspect it. He appeared at ease with himself and others. However, the secret would occasionally reveal itself in the place where for the sincere, few secrets can hide, the church. I would never have seen the secret except one Sunday I peeked.

Cosby Mae Anderson declares that there’s nothing she would change about her life. Faith in God and her family’s love, she says, supplied grace sufficient for a happy existence.

Thanks a lot scientists of the year 2006.
Before you rode in on Rocinante, penning some new definition of the word “planet,” life was easy. Back then there were nine planets. Even if we didn’t exactly, precisely and for sure and certain know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what we all meant when we said planet, we knew there were nine of them. Now we aren’t so sure. Worse, we don’t know what to say when our 6-year-old sons ask if there are eight planets in the solar system.

My friend Bill Shermer, a source of wit and wisdom, described the tirade a distraught woman poured out upon the circulation manager of the local newspaper. After the onslaught, her question was quite simple, “Why have you not delivered my Sunday paper?”

As a warning to readers, it’s important to acknowledge that animals were harmed in the gathering of material for this column. A crustacean met an untimely end, and a black lab, I hope, learned a valuable lesson. Well, that last part is more wishful than realistic. Despite multiple encounters, the 3-year-old hasn’t even learned that skunks have the power to make him and his owners miserable for days.

This Saturday afternoon, for a while at least, the sun will shine bright, as many Americans will be native sons and daughters of Kentucky regardless of their place of birth. Men will be Kentucky colonels, women will be Kentucky ladies and the air will fill with strains of “My Old Kentucky Home,” played by the University of Louisville Marching Band (singing accompaniment by most of the fans both in the stands and the TV audience) when for the 133rd time, the Kentucky Derby will take place.

We live in paradise. I noticed it on May Day, songbirds and creekbirds flitting through my little woods, butterflies floating over the flowers, fat bumblebees bumping clumsily into each other through the blooming bushes.

Fans of country music in general and the Carter Family in particular will want to see Barter Theatre’s “Keep on the Sunny Side” during the month of May.  Written by Doug Pote, it is the most-requested Barter show.