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Ponying up for a pair of ponies

When you’re walking back to the car, trying for all the world to look like you don’t really want all that much whatever item that has you out and about in your car, is when you begin the negotiations. So saith my father-in-law.

Some of the names were shocking. Others were anything but. We all knew about, or suspected, Rafael Palmeiro, Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi. But how many of us had any idea about players like Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Jerry Hairston?

On frustrating days, toting objects from one place to another, receiving and sending armloads of paper that will get pitched out, or standing on the college hilltop to watch massive tons of tractor-trailer cargo booming by in either direction—logs this way, planks that; goods this way, garbage that way—I sometimes conclude that the life of man could be reduced to the function of transporting molecules from here to there.

Beyond good books

Just after I’d finished my pre-Christmas columns on “happiness,” Eknath Easwaran’s newsletter arrived from Blue Mountain.
Now here was a man who understood happiness, in his long and fruitful life. From his early years teaching English in California universities, he was fascinated by the human search for happiness that pervaded all the world’s literature, the great religious texts—and the American culture around him.

Sheriff’s Office solidarity

During my first visit to the beautiful new Wytheville Community Center, I was privileged to attend a free concert performed by the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Concert Band.  Also featured was their superb Rhythm in Blue Jazz Ensemble.  Sponsored by the Wytheville Enterprise, this approximately hour-long concert was held on Nov. 16 in the town’s new meeting center, a huge and elegantly designed auditorium.

I’m fairly certain Black Friday is why the terrorists and the French hate us. I can’t say for sure, since I don’t know any terrorists or French people on a first-name basis. But I doubt I miss my guess by far.