Fuzzy Butt wore angel wings, but I have my doubts about them truly reflecting his personality. His name aside, Fuzzy Butt was a kitten, and kittens grow into cats, which possess many redeeming qualities. Few of them, however, could be classified as angelic.

My mother-in-law, Eunice Adele Mutter, and I get along well. We talk a lot, especially about the “old days.” I generally enjoy these conversations as I am something of a history buff and she, having been born in the mid-1920s, has lived to see a good bit of it. While her memory isn’t quite what it used to be (then neither is mine), it is still pretty sharp and she has done a lot of interesting things over the years.

My wife noticed it first because she notices those sorts of things.
“Did you see that?” she asked.
I had or at least thought I had, so I said “sure.” Trouble is, when someone asks “did you see that?” they don’t usually mean the obvious thing that you had to have seen. So really I hadn’t seen it, if that makes sense. 

While we had some blessed rainstorms last week, NASA was discovering water molecules within the dirt of Mars. Officials celebrated with champagne (from earth), but I found myself wishing they could also make a link between this extraterrestrial discovery of the most precious substance known to man—and our handling of water here, on the planet lying so close we cannot see it.

With another Fourth of July having recently passed, I’ve heard a lot of people talk about the annual traditions in which they use to take part every Independence Day.  In nearly every case, it seems that everyone I spoke to about these traditions was talking in the past tense.  Unfortunately, people do not seem to celebrate the Fourth of July, or any other holiday for that matter, in the invaluable traditional sense they used to.  My dad told me that when he lived in High Point, N.C., long ago, he would come home to my grandparents’ house in rural Grayson County for a cookout and croquet tournament.  My clearest Fourth of July memories include going to the home of my late great-great-aunt Hazel in Austinville for an annual neighborhood barbecue and fireworks display.  Hazel’s neighbors, Kirk and Carmen Burkett, hosted the event, which was held in the old ball diamond behind her house.  Today, that ball diamond no longer exists, as the up and coming New River water treatment plant is now being built there. 

I have to call it just a coincidence. It is simply too much to think that God had anything to do with the events at Mount Moriah Baptist Church in the last week.

Is it just me or does it seem that anyone in or employed by our federal government will go to any length, including the occasional outright lie, to avoid admitting they were wrong? Now no one likes being embarrassed by mistakes. But they happen. If you are human you will make them occasionally. And yes, almost anyone will do a little bit of white-lie butt-covering if they figure it will work. But most of us, particularly if faced with a minor faux pas, won’t just out and out lie about it.

There’s an old-timey kaleidoscope with its business end broken by a Christmas hammer. There’s a birthday bug collecting box. A single sock, for some reason. Scraps of wood, thin little pieces that came from the cutting of bigger scraps of wood Sunday. And there’s the horseshoe, scrounged from somewhere, hanging from a tree branch. There isn’t any poison ivy. I tore it all down Tuesday night after a slight rash appeared on nearly every one in the family. It was the first bout for all of us, I think. After years of pulling the stuff up barehanded, I finally hit my limit when the juice from some severed section of ivy plant dripped onto my exposed skin. Go figure. 

It’s that time of year when the landscape is a bakery of divine smells. A few come to mind. Ready to inhale?

Piney and She were very much interested in the (local Florida) attempts to meet the depression with its growing employment and high food costs problems.