Appalachian Mountain Dreams

From Verlyn Klinkenborg of The New York Times comes this paragraph today… Nearly every image of nature I have ever come across misses the sense of intricate confusion underfoot in the woods, the thickets of goldenrod collapsing into each other along the roadsides, the rotting tusks of fallen beeches broken against the western hillside. It almost never makes sense to

I have a lot to be thankful for in this past year. It was a little over a year ago that I stumbled into the online Floyd County community and met (virtually) Fred, Colleen, Doug and David and all of their friends in Floyd County, Va. It was their examples that led me to start this blog (so, if you

Riding the Ferry on Galveston BayOf all of the photo’s from this year, this is the one the snaps… The printed version in my office always gets a positive response.

As I run out the clock on 2006 with some time off at home I find myself falling into my old (very old) ways of late nights and sleeping in mornings. I hope everyone out there reading this made it through the Christmas celebrations well and happy. I know we seem to have lived through another one without a major

“‘Tis the morning of Christmasand all through the housenot a creature is stirringnot even my spouse” As I sit this morning drinking my coffee and enjoying the still, quiet house I can’t help but remember Christmas’ past. Back before the youngest member of this household was 16 going on 25…In those days you were up half the night helping Santa

As I was looking at my blogger dashboard the other day I noticed I was coming up on an anniversary of sorts and this post is it…This post is number 200 on this blog. That really doesn’t mean much, I suppose, to any one but me. And the real meaning of the number is that I managed to keep putting

For some reason, it always amazes me to stumble across someone who understands the internet (or at least the way I think it should work). Dick Eastman, who writes online genealogy articles, pointed the way to Burr Morris of Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks and deserves the thanks for this find. After reading Dick’s post I wandered on over and discovered

Is it jut me or is George Will seeming a bit testy over blogger? Have too many bloggers (both us amateurs and the his professional colleges) called him to task over his reporting on the Webb and Bush “conversation”?  Richard Stengel, Time’s managing editor, says, “Thomas Paine was in effect the first blogger” and “Ben Franklin was essentially loading his persona

For those of us who are weight challenged, this could explain why eating salads for ever don’t make a big difference in your weight…  Obese people have more digestive microbes that are especially efficient at extracting calories from food, the researchers said, and the proportion of these super-digesting organisms ebbs as the people lose weight. Moreover, when the scientists transplanted these bacteria

Reflections from a weekend past… Friday afternoon I made a run south to the Brazoria NWR, I left the house about 3pm in sunshine and scattered clouds, by the time I arrived the fog was so thick visibility was down to under a quarter of a mile. In all of the fun this weekend I haven’t even downloaded the photo’s