Appalachian Mountain Dreams

This past weekend we passed another of those little milestones you don’t really think about as you are getting older. My youngest daughter and I started her driving practice so she can get her license. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was doing the same thing with her mother…my how time flies when you are having a life.

Marie Freeman over at Blue Ridge Blog mentioned she was experimenting with HDR photography. The link on her page led me to the demo download of Photomatix Pro. I have been playing with the demo and I am really impressed. Here are some samples I have been playing with and the originals from the camera…And this:As you can see, the

My favorite local columnist. Once upon a time I though he had the worlds best job. As time has gone by I realized how tough it would be to come up with these things on a regular basis… Dec. 1, 2006, 4:58PMWhat does God look like to a child? By LEON HALECopyright 2006 Houston Chronicle CHESTER B., one of the

Great images in words. Even I, a southern boy who has had few run-ins with frozen precipitation, can see the images as I read these lines. Highly appropriate following last weeks storms. Thanks Garrison, a great pick for a December morning. Poem: “Snow in the Suburbs,” by Thomas Hardy. Public Domain.Snow in the SuburbsEvery branch big with it,Bent every twig

Andy Griffin wrote an essay in 2002 entitled “Somewhere Near Salinas”. It is about George Harrison, gardening, and farming, but, mostly it’s about life. I found this paragraph touched me. George Harrison didn’t spend much time on stage after The Concert for Bangladesh. He focused instead on his interest in religion and gardening. He even dedicated his autobiography to “gardeners everywhere.”

For the first time in a long time we’ve flipped. This morning in SE Texas the temperature stands at 37 degrees as I type. I see from the forecast email I get that the temperatures on the Blue Ridge in Boone and Floyd are almost 30 degrees higher. Folks this doesn’t happen very often. But I sure will enjoy the

 In the last month we’ve been given two reasons to drink red wine. First it was the resveratrol which was keeping overweight, out of shape mice young now it’s procyanidins… In the latest research, Roger Corder of Queen Mary’s School of Medicine in London and colleagues analyzed various components of red wine. They found that substances called procyanidins appeared to

The first thing up in my email que was the Washington Post this morning. The first headline that caught my eye was a story about the Freshman Senator from Virginia. In Following His Own Script, Webb May Test Senate’s Limits – washingtonpost.com At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President

Thanks to Jason at kottke.org  Put simply, the rich pay a lot of taxes as a total percentage of taxes collected, but they don’t pay a lot of taxes as a percentage of what they can afford to pay, or as a percentage of what the government needs to close the deficit gap. Mr. Buffett compiled a data sheet of the

Garrison picked a good example of Horace’s writings. I find it a prayer I could also recite on a daily basis… On this day in 8 B.C., the Roman poet Horace died (books by this author). He hated the chaos of Rome, and when his patron gave him a farm in the Italian countryside, he wrote, “I prayed for this: