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.

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.

34 children from around the area perform in the production. Two are from Floyd County.

The project will have a solar farm, and the owners eventually want to explore wind power.

Tickets are still available for the U.S. Air Force Heritage of America Band Concert on Friday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m. at the Wytheville Meeting Center. There is limited seating for the free event sponsored by the Wytheville Enterprise.

It’s all the government’s fault.
Most of the time, hearing that all-too familiar cry, we cringe. We don’t necessarily believe that the government owes us anything or should provide us anything other than a few basic freedoms, such as the right to assemble and petition for a redress of grievances. The freedom to worship or not worship as we so choose. Those sorts of things. The government isn’t to blame when it does what it’s supposed to do. And there lies the problem. 

I couldn’t finish my “autumn fire” series without airing some smoke on a topic that burns me up. That’d be the season’s campaign attack ads. If they’ve irritated you this year, wait till next.

Coffee’s steaming from Smyth community

Coffee’s steaming from Smyth community

The old dairy barn is hot pink. The silo brick. The weather vane atop the barn’s tin roof looks from a distance like a pig. And is.