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.

“He’s got the whole world in his hands…“ Laurie London first recorded this popular spiritual in 1958; it eventually went all the way to # 1. Simple lyrics coupled with a melodious tune have sustained the music’s popularity through the years. Most of us find it comforting to think that the world and our very lives do not simply spin unfettered in space, but rest firmly in the grasp of the almighty. However, I wonder what the song sounds like in Cantonese. I wonder if they have ever sung it in China. If so, do they still?

I was born in Bristol, Tenn., and spent most of my youth in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia and Western North Carolina. I also lived in several places in the Deep South growing up and, after college, spent five years with my Wytheville-born wife in New York City.

It is a strange country we live in. We have a government that is both the best and worst in the world.

Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed had first come to Florida to look after She’s parents. Among the first jobs they had was Piney as director of education for the thousands of boat-people, mostly Vietnamese, streaming in from that horror-war aftermath. She was a volunteer teacher of English.

There is a new church in Wales. Founded by two cousins, Barney and Michael Jones, it is the Church of Jediism.

Piney and She Who Must Be Obeyed have an extended family daughter of whom they are very fond. She has a “ranch” of 28 acres on the Withlacoochee River with an extraordinary Buckminster Fuller “Dome” house on it.

Smyth County is lucky. It has Pat Arnold as its director of the Department of Social Services. He is a kind, concerned, compassionate and highly intelligent fellow who will fill this position admirably. I’m lucky too. Pat has been a good friend since we were small children. He proved it once again this recent Election Day, both by cheering me up and giving me the material for this column.

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.