Spread Those Wings!

Spread Those Wings!

It’s summer, and that means butterflies, those amazingly beautiful insects flitting around gardens and flowers and plants everywhere. I’ve read that there are 20,000 species of them. The famous Monarch makes an annual 4,000-mile migration (round trip) to avoid the...
The Hymns in Us

The Hymns in Us

They come in many forms. A poet pens one and calls it an ode. A family composes one following a death and it’s called a eulogy. Friends sometimes lampoon a favorite buddy at a ceremony called a roast. The film industry compiles one as an homage. A nation, on its...
What a Life!

What a Life!

On any given street in any given neighborhood anywhere in the world, life’s parade is on the march. At one house, a new baby has just come home from the hospital. At the next, a couple is dividing up a household as the divorce becomes final. At the third, frenetic...
Happy trails, y’all!

Happy trails, y’all!

Here, in coastal southeastern Virginia, we have an unusual situation with our one main highway, Interstate 64 (affectionately, or otherwise, known simply as ’64’). Its even number indicates an East-West roadway. But for ‘Southside’ locals (those living in Norfolk,...
Name Your Price

Name Your Price

On multiple weekends a year, Garage/Yard Sales bear out the truism: “One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.” Strewn across driveways and lawns from New Hampshire to California one finds an eclectic display of anything from assorted building materials and tools to...
What comes after Dot ‘3’?

What comes after Dot ‘3’?

Did you ever have a book of ‘Connect the Dots’ when you were little? It was a book of puzzles where there were numbered dots all over the page, and you had to draw a line from dot ‘1’ to dot ‘2’ to dot ‘3’ and so on, whereupon a picture you had ‘drawn’ would appear...
What’s Cooking?

What’s Cooking?

I have a theory. Well, maybe not a theory, more like a thought that’s percolating. Well, maybe it’s just my runaway imagination. In any case, it probably won’t hold up to close scrutiny or informed research, but if you’ll humor me for a few hundred words, I’ll unpack...
Take a load off. Put your feet up.

Take a load off. Put your feet up.

It’s easy to identify competitive types. They’re the ones on the highway who can’t tolerate another vehicle in front of them, so they are constantly shifting lanes to get ahead of the ‘Sunday drivers.’ They’re the ones who have to tell you they’ve sheared an hour off...
Too much of a good thing?

Too much of a good thing?

A. A. Milne’s famous donkey, Eeyore, responds to the new red balloon that Christopher Robin attaches as his tail’s replacement: “Sure is a cheerful color. Guess I’ll have to get used to it.” When Piglet bids him a cheery, “Good Morning,” he...
Better Than Coffee??

Better Than Coffee??

Today, there’s a race going on. The Tour de France is a 23-day, 2414-mile bicycling trek through France, ending on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on Sunday, July 18. There are 184 riders in 8 teams. But there’s another race happening. It’s among car manufacturers who are...