My annual battle with the grass is under way.
Just a day or so ago I waded through embarrassingly high, hip high in places, grass, alternately pushing and dragging a mower. In fairness to me, I had mowed the half acre immediately around the house. So this wasn’t my first time on the lawn. It was, however, the first time that really counted, the first time I mowed everything, or nearly everything, I’ve got to mow. 

It seems to me that the grocery store is ill-designed for what people actually do there.  And I know whereof I speak.  I am the world’s foremost expert in Anthro-ergonomics, a field that I invented yesterday.  He are my suggestions about the way a grocery store should be laid out. 

Perhaps you’ve noticed that I haven’t mentioned the little Sentra in a long time.  That’s because I wasn’t up to writing about its demise last year.  Right now, it’s in a scrap heap somewhere, being harvested like a good little donor. 

Thanks a lot scientists of the year 2006.
Before you rode in on Rocinante, penning some new definition of the word “planet,” life was easy. Back then there were nine planets. Even if we didn’t exactly, precisely and for sure and certain know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what we all meant when we said planet, we knew there were nine of them. Now we aren’t so sure. Worse, we don’t know what to say when our 6-year-old sons ask if there are eight planets in the solar system.

My friend Susan told me about the National Geographic Genographic Project, an effort to track human migration patterns over a long period of time.  I thought that participating in the project would help me in my own efforts to understand my relationship with my mother, so I swabbed my mouth for a sample of mitochondrial DNA.

Every week, I go to the Dunk ‘N Deli and buy six plain cake donuts.  I bring them home, package them individually in plastic baggies, and have one each morning with my coffee.  This is my morning ritual.

We live in paradise. I noticed it on May Day, songbirds and creekbirds flitting through my little woods, butterflies floating over the flowers, fat bumblebees bumping clumsily into each other through the blooming bushes.

Fans of country music in general and the Carter Family in particular will want to see Barter Theatre’s “Keep on the Sunny Side” during the month of May.  Written by Doug Pote, it is the most-requested Barter show.

Thursday I drove to Radford to participate in a poetry reading in honor of Rita Riddle, who taught at Radford University for many years until she died two years ago.  Jim Minick, a writer and farmer who lives in Wythe County, had finished editing a collection of her poems that was in the works at the end of her life.

I am fascinated with the unique and immutable truths of Southwest Virginia. I am calling these truths the Tao.
Tao is defined as “the rational basis of human activity or conduct” or “a universal, regarded as an ideal attained to a greater or lesser degree by those embodying it.” Thus, the people of this region define the Tao, and it defines them. They practice the Tao, because they have no other choice. They are the Tao.