A single white candle sits in my office. It’s unimpressive in physical size – only a little more than four inches tall and finger-width wide. Tiny balls of wax hardened where they spilled over the top and a blackened wick tell that the candle has been burned. The flimsy cardboard finger protector still rests about midway down the molded wax tube giving a bit of testimony about its use.
The candle was lit once—on Sept. 12, 2001.

As usual, this column is being written on Thursday. This happens to be Sept. 11, and is the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks that killed so many innocent people and destroyed the World Trade Center as well as damaging the Pentagon.

Piney was thinking back to the days of good presidents. As he drove the streets of Tampa, he remembered drives in Paris. Piney didn’t think he had ever met 12 drivers that he found more interesting than the Paris Embassy motor pool drivers in those old days. There were a dozen of them. 

I heard about a couple not speaking to each other. The standoff went on for days with neither budging. When the man needed to catch a plane early the next morning, he placed a note beside his sleeping wife, “Please wake me when you leave for work.” He slept smugly, knowing she would be the one to break the silence. The next morning he woke late only to find a note on the nightstand. “Wake up, or you will miss your plane.”

Were my mother still alive today, on Wednesday, Sept. 10, she would turn 81 years old. Sadly, she passed away in April 2004. Although by then she had several health problems, her primary one was Alzheimer’s.

At the time I had finished writing last week’s column, only the first week of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China and transpired.  With that much of the Olympics still remaining, there were too many moments to come worthy of mentioning, that I had to comment this week on the rest of this amazing 29th Summer Olympiad.  Last week, I spent so much time commenting on the cultural and artistic aspects of the Olympics that I only had space enough to mention two athletes in one sport.  While I enjoyed watching the outstanding aquatic efforts made by Michael Phelps and Dara Torres probably more than any other aspect of these games, there are many more great achievements made by our American athletes that are equally noteworthy.  Even though there are still too many to mention, I’ll do my best to touch on some of the highlights.

He was 102-years-old and wanted me to baptize him. Health troubles prohibited immersion, but that did not rule out baptism. I planned to sprinkle a small amount of water on his head, hoping that John the Baptist was not looking. Yet, before baptism, I wanted to talk to him about God. I wanted to know his story.

Hello my fellow Appalachian residents. Guess what? An article carried in the Bristol Herald-Courier, the daily sister paper of the Smyth County News & Messenger, on Aug. 27 contained a report released by the government. It seems there is wonderful news from our distinguished United States Census Bureau. At least, the agency seemed to think so. According to the recent release (reported by the Associated Press), median incomes are up in Appalachian. Of course, with the exception of Virginia, Maryland and New York (yes, a very tiny bit of New York lies in Appalachia), the median income is far below the national average, which is just over $50,000. Appalachia’s median income hovers around $39,000.

The Riner resident is quick to say there are others who do greater things then he. Calling people on the phone and wishing others a “Happy Birthday” is just his thing.

“What kind of people steal from a church?” Last week, after someone took a pallet of shingles from the church parking lot, I heard that question at least a dozen times. “What kind of people steal from a church?” The question assumes there is a particular kind of person who specializes in ecclesiastic crime.