“The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow,” William Blake once wrote, “nor the lion the horse, how he shall take his prey.”

Nor the tree the human standing there, looking up at awe at something that doesn’t know awe from an early frost.  There’s something to be said for detachment. 

I’d driven by them for weeks, watching fruit ripen on old trees growing in odd patches of land where modern civilization intersects with the past.  I was tempted at times to park the car on the side of a road and try to pick one.  But I didn’t, no matter how handsome these apples were.

It’s gotten to be something of a routine. I plunge some sharp object – Sunday night it was a knife – into some part of my body – Sunday night it was the webbing between my thumb and pointer finger. By now I know when it needs stitches, when it needs a band-aid and when it needs to be ignored, because you know sometimes bleeding appendages will stop bleeding if you just pay them no mind. A few weeks ago the same spot on the same hand got laid open with a hatchet. Yes, a hatchet, and yes I was being reasonably careful, but obviously not quite careful enough. It required a couple days of band-aid therapy. I knew that one was minor, after I made quite sure my thumb was still there, still working and still willing to help grab things like hatchets to fling through the air in pain-induced rages.
Sunday I knew without looking that stitches would be a requirement. When a knife slides through skin to the hilt, if pocketknives can be said to have a hilt, you can be pretty sure stitches will be required. The prospect of reconstructive nerve surgery crossed my mind.

I once heard about a wealthy man who was dying. While his life was full of many good things, including a wife and children, money meant the most to him. So important was this man’s wealth, he convinced himself he could do the impossible and take it with him.

It is October and officially autumn. To paraphrase Charles Dickens’ opening of “A Tale of Two Cities,” it is the best of times, it is the worst of times; it is the season of Light, it is the season of Darkness.

Editor’s note:  Last week, Clarke proposed that candidates for elected office complete a checklist so that the political parties could prepare their responses to allegations in advance.  The remainder of the questionnaire is directed at appointed or elected incumbents who are being considered for higher office. 
Appointed or Elected Office:

I have these two little hamsters that like to eat and drink and sleep and play.  Mostly they eat seeds and nuts, with the occasional piece of fruit or vegetable.  I love these hamsters.  I even filter their water. 

I hate being a tourist. Oh, I love to see new places and learn new things. I just hate looking like I have never been there before, which, of course, I have not. I know that makes absolutely no sense, but I just do not like looking like a tourist. If I could be an anonymous tourist, I would be happy. Unfortunately, my wife will not let me do that.

All y’all old enough probably remember old Fats Domino singing, “Blue Monday,” where old Fats says how he hates Mondays. Well, Brother Domino (a pretty good singer by the way) ain’t the only one. According to that thing old Rock uses, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia (en.wikipedia.org), “Modern culture usually looks at Monday as the beginning of the workweek, as it is typically Monday when adults go back to work and children back to school after the weekend. Thus, Mondays are often seen as a misfortune.”
Well, I’m here to tell all y’all, this past Monday was a corker, according to Rock.

Monday night the Saltville Town Council met supposedly to ‘reconvene’ the Sept. 9 meeting.  You can’t reconvene a meeting that was never recessed.  You certainly can’t reconvene a meeting that was adjourned. Mayor Jeff Campbell claims that he adjourned the meeting on the ninth.  No meeting can be adjourned while in closed session.  Any motion has to be done in the open for all to see and hear. Quite a dilemma for that Sept. 9 meeting. 

It seems to me that the political parties ought to get presidential and vice presidential candidates to complete a questionnaire before the party nominates them.  That way, the party would know in advance about any unseemly stuff that the press might turn up when it investigates the candidates.