Keeping Time

I was in the car earlier listening to music from my cell phone, and I started hitting the steering wheel as I kept time to the beat.

My mind went back to another time, when I was eight years old. Back then, kids didn't have to sit in car seats or wear seat belts or whatever. I could climb from front to back over and over again if I wanted.

But my father was driving and he didn't put up with much messing around, so I was sitting up straight trying to peer over the dash.

We were on a windy old crooked road heading home. Dad drove fast, and he ended up behind an old beat up pickup truck.

He tailgated it. Then he pointed to the man in the truck. "See how his hand is moving? He's keeping beat to a song."

I peered over the dash and nodded. I could barely make it out, because I was so little and short, but I caught the flash of movement.

Dad said, "Let's see if we can find what song he's listening to."

He turned on the radio and switched stations until he landed on a song that had the same beat as the hands of the man in the truck.

"See?" Dad said, his own hands now hitting at the wheel. "Feel the beat of the music? You can tell a song just from the beat."

I nodded, although I really didn't see because I couldn't see the man in the pickup's hands anymore, but I could see my father's. It was always easier to agree.

"Now you do it," Dad said. And so I started tapping on the dash to the beat of the song. 

Tap, tap. 

"Keep it in time," Dad said. 

Tap. Tap. 

"There you go, you got it."

We tapped the rhythm to ourselves, along with the oblivious fellow in front of us, the rest of the way home.

Back to today, driving home and listening to my own music, I thought about how now I could never pull up to a car and watch some person tapping out a song and know what they were listening to, not with Sirius XM and cell phones with Apple Music and multiple radio stations and everything. By the time I found the beat, the song would be over, if I ever found it at all.

What a different world we live in, one all mixed up with multiple choices in everything from music to television shows to social media. Nobody lives in the same place anymore.

I'm not so sure that's a good thing. 

Empty Shelves

Made with AI

I can't find the peas I like at the grocery store.

I've looked not in just a single store. Several stores.

No steamer peas. Those are the kind I like. Easy to fix. Easy way to get a veggie into my day.

So I did what I do when something bothers me. I wondered first of all, how are peas harvested?

Turns out, they aren't picked by hand like the ones in my garden. Large‑scale pea growers use specialized machines like tractor‑mounted cutters, lifters and a mobile “viner” that strips pods and threshes them. They don't do anything by hand.

So, if it wasn't a labor shortage keeping peas from being picked, because, you know, machines, what was the problem?

"Frozen peas are scarce right now because a combination of unseasonal heatwaves in key growing regions, packaging resin shortages, and maxed‑out cold‑storage capacity has disrupted the supply chain. Retailers also prioritize their own store brands when freezer space is limited, further narrowing options." (So sayth Alexa.)

Ok. Wow. So, what is packing resin? I didn't know. I assumed it was glue because tree resin is sticky. But it's not glue. It's plastic. That means it's the film, the bag, the pouch my beloved steamer peas go into. So, the peas can be perfectly fine, but they will never reach the shelf. There's nothing to put them in.

At least part of the shortage of "packing resin" is happening because the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off Gulf‑origin resin supply, which is a major source for PE and PP resins used in packaging. 

Imagine that! I can't get my peas because of the non-war in Iran.

Now, I don't know whether the bag that should contain my peas is sitting somewhere waiting for resin. But I do know that the resin supply itself has been disrupted, and that packaging is one more potential choke point between a harvested crop and my freezer.

 

In learning about packing resin, I discovered that this is also used in things like sterile medical packaging. Nothing can be substituted for virgin resin in this situation. That sounds scary and concerning, doesn't it?

 

So, let's go back to the "maxed-out cold-storage capacity" issue. This is a supply chain issue involving trucks and drivers.

Turns out that some of the people who drive the refrigerated trucks (those are the ones that keep frozen peas frozen between the plant and the store) have lost their jobs. 

The United States has spent the past year pulling them off the road. A rule change made 200,000 non-domiciled CDL holders ineligible to continue working and as their commercial driver's licenses come up for renewal, they will be out of a job. Recently, a crackdown called Operation Highway Shield detained 51 people in three days in July and put 766 drivers and vehicles out of service. The administration says it's about safety. The people losing their jobs were legally authorized to work.

But they aren't driving trucks anymore.

 

So we have vegetables and fruits and other goods just hanging out rotting because the government in its infinite wisdom decided to remove the people who drive the trucks from the highway. Are American citizens lining up to learn to drive these trucks?

Since I don't have peas, I would say not. 

And look at what Indeed has to say about these jobs!

Twelve thousand cold chain jobs!

No wonder I don't have frozen peas on the store shelf.

And I would be remiss not to also point out that we have had a drought along the eastern seaboard from the Mid-Atlantic states to Florida. I'm sure that affects the crops, along with the devastating heat waves we've had in other areas of the country. Peas aren't the easiest crop to grow, or at least they aren't for me.

What I want to know is how this will be resolved?

I also wonder what else I will be looking for soon that I won't be able to find.

Should we be worried about food this winter?

A Ghost Book Found Me

 

Recently, I slipped into Barnes & Noble to use the restroom. Of course, I can’t walk into a bookstore without spending a little time there, so after I washed my hands, I looked around.

At this B&N, the section nearest to the restrooms was New Age items. Tarot cards, runes, books on Wicca. I glanced over the selection and saw a book called Haunts of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Highlands.

Intrigued, I picked it up, and as I frequently do when looking at local work, because, you know, reporter brain, I flipped to the back to see if there was an index that might have any places in my county listed. I idly flipped to “F” for Fincastle.

What I found instead was my name!

The book author, Joe Tennis, had listed a bibliography in the back, and he cited an article I’d written for The Fincastle Herald in 2008 as a source for one of his entries.

I bought the book. Not everyone can walk into a bookstore and find their name in it, after all.

This was a delightfully weird little full-circle moment. Of all the places to discover it, this was unexpected. I know my name is in some local history books at the museum. I’ve seen my name in emails from folks who were researching other aspects of the county, and I know some of my work has been used (frequently without permission) in various books and publications.

But I wasn’t expecting to find my name in something at Barnes & Noble while I was wandering through the New Age section. The universe apparently decided the ghost book needed to find me.

Seeing my own name in the bibliography of a published book made me realize that my work is history now – not history as in “done with it,” but history as in, many of the pieces I wrote will someday end up in other publications. Maybe cited, maybe not, but about 40 years of the story of my community lives because I wrote it up.

I spent decades gathering small pieces of local history, the stories people might dismiss as "just folklore," only to find that one of the pieces traveled beyond the local newspaper pages and became part of someone else's research.

I found the author on Facebook and wrote him a little note thanking him for listing me in his bibliography. He wrote back, telling me he remembered the first time he’d found his work cited in something else. He too wrote for newspapers and is now retired. It was a little kinship between strangers.

This was a quiet reminder my life and my work exist whether or not certain people acknowledge it. 

The story exists because I showed up. My byline is in the annals of the newspaper because I was there. I interviewed people. I wrote articles. Other people will find my work useful.

I went out and I created. No one can take that away, overlook it, or decide it didn’t count. Because what I did counted then, and it counts today, and it will count 100 years – maybe 200 years, even – from now.

It was a pretty remarkable thing to find on a random Tuesday morning.

Truth in Advertising

I remember a time when “truth in advertising” actually meant something. Ads weren't lies, claims had to be provable, and the fine print couldn’t contradict the big print. The FTC even chased violators. It wasn’t perfect, but there was at least a cultural expectation that ads had to resemble reality.

Somewhere along the way, that expectation evaporated.

Ads are just lies now.

I play a city‑building game called Elvenar. I enjoy it. It’s strategic, cooperative, and visually polished. But the ads for it are nothing like the game.

The ads show tiny villagers you can drag around, little elves picking up lumber, and chests that drop out of the sky. None of that exists in the real game. Not one pixel of it.

All I do in Elvenar is build structures, manage resources, and work with my fellowship. We have a weekly tournament that isn't against one another but against the game itself, and you can auto-fight that if you want to and never see a movement of a bow. There are no wandering villagers to interact with. No puzzles. Just city planning, resource checks, and "events" that are simply doing the things one needs to do play the game anyway.

My biggest city in Elvenar. Mostly all you do is move buildings around. No people to play
with. No chests dropping from the sky. Just a city-building game.

Elvenar is run by InnoGames, the same company behind Forge of Empires, and they use the same advertising strategy for both: show a completely fictional version of the game because it gets more clicks. Real gameplay footage doesn’t convert well. City builders look slow and thoughtful, which is great for players like me, but terrible for marketing. So, the ads show a fantasy instead of the product.

Legally, companies defend this as “creative representation.” Regulators treat game ads as harmless exaggeration. As long as the ad doesn’t promise a specific feature you pay extra for, they get away with it. The fine print says “not actual gameplay,” and that’s apparently enough.

The irony is that Elvenar and Forge of Empires are actually good games. Deep, strategic, and well‑designed. But I wonder how many people sign up only to be disappointed when the games are nothing like the advertisements.

So what happened? Why can't cigarette companies still not advertise on TV but video game promoters can flat-out lie about their product? 

I think a few things happened:

• The internet blew the doors off regulation. The FTC was built for TV, radio, and print. It was not built for millions of micro‑ads, influencers, sponsored posts, and algorithmic targeting.

• “Puffery” became a legal shield. Companies can now say things like “best,” “fastest,” “most trusted,” “America’s favorite,” without proving a thing. Courts treat it as harmless exaggeration.

• Influencers blurred the line between opinion and advertising. Half the time you don’t even know you’re looking at an ad.

• Fine print became microscopic. Legally, the disclosure is there. Practically, nobody can read it.

• Enforcement budgets shrank. The FTC can’t chase every misleading claim across social media, YouTube, TikTok, and a thousand ad networks.

• Algorithms reward exaggeration. The more dramatic the claim, the more clicks. The more clicks, the more money. Honesty doesn’t trend.

So “truth in advertising” technically still exists. The laws are still on the books. But in practice, the guardrails have rusted. Companies learned how to skirt the rules, regulators haven’t kept up, and the internet rewards exaggeration far more than honesty.

And that’s how we ended up with Elvenar ads that advertise a game nobody can actually play.

I Will Not Watch the Soufflé

I spent forty years watching local government.

I watched zoning battles that lasted longer than some marriages. I watched supervisors argue about storm drains with the intensity of Supreme Court justices. I watched planning commissioners debate parking spaces as though civilization itself depended on whether there should be twenty-six or twenty-eight.

And I loved it.

Because every meeting, every hearing, every painful compromise eventually produced something. A vote. A decision. Meeting adjourned. And then I made that vote or decision into a thing you could hold in your hand. I created a story with a closing paragraph, and it went into a newspaper that anyone could buy and hold and read while they drank coffee.

Then I retired, and I discovered television had invented a completely different kind of process. Shows with no ending.

For example, there are shows about cars that are endlessly restored. Tractors that endlessly cultivate. People watch other people spend an entire hour making the perfect soufflé, only to eat it after the credits roll.

I blame Bob Ross. Not really, of course. PBS has enough problems already. But Bob Ross may have been the start of this trend. He stood in front of a canvas, spoke in that soothing whisper, assured us there were no mistakes - just "happy little accidents." He somehow convinced America that watching paint dry could be relaxing.

The rest of television apparently took notes, and now my husband watches car restoration shows like they're scripture.

These are not people driving beautiful cars, although he likes to watch people buy expensive cars. Mostly, he watches men tear cars apart, sand them, and put them back together.

He'll happily spend hours watching someone hunt for an original carburetor, tape off pinstripes, or debate the correct shade of factory paint for a 1969 Ford Mustang. Then he'll switch over to RFD and watch tractors putter across fields as though the steady rumble of a diesel engine is a complete narrative.

And then there are home decorating shows. Or cooking shows. I don't want to watch someone whip egg whites, reduce a sauce, or explain why Himalayan pink salt is somehow superior to the salt already sitting in my cabinet. I've never understood why anyone would voluntarily spend an hour watching somebody else cook dinner.

I hate to cook dinner.

One day, while I was . . . cooking dinner . . . it occurred to me that this isn't really about television.

It's about the difference between how my husband experiences time and how I do.

I spent four decades as a reporter. My job was chasing what happened. Every story demanded a beginning, conflict, facts, resolution. Deadlines didn't allow for endless process. Eventually the meeting adjourned. The lawsuit settled. The election ended. Somebody won, somebody lost, and I wrote the last paragraph.

That became the rhythm of my life.

My husband's rhythm is different.

For him, watching someone restore a car isn't really about the car. It's about the quiet satisfaction of seeing order emerge from chaos. One bolt at a time. One coat of paint at a time. One field at a time.

He's resting in a way I simply don't recognize as rest. He's not wrong to enjoy it. It's just not my peace.

So here's my anti-manifesto.

I Will Not Watch the Soufflé.

I will not spend my retirement marveling at someone's perfect meringue.

I will not become emotionally invested in whether a carburetor is period-correct.

I will not pretend sanding a fender for forty-five minutes is edge-of-your-seat television.

Instead, I'll get a fresh glass of water.

I'll open another book and I'll disappear into stories that actually end.

Meanwhile, my husband will happily watch another tractor crawl across another field.

And that's okay.

Marriage doesn't require us to enjoy the same things. Sometimes it simply requires us to let each other enjoy different things in the same room.

So, Bob Ross, wherever you are, I forgive you.

You probably never imagined your happy little trees would inspire an entire generation of television devoted to watching people patiently make things.

I'll let the tractor puttering be the soundtrack to someone else's peace. Because peace, I've learned, doesn't have to make sense.

It just has to be mine.

An Unhinged Biography

CountryDew was last seen emerging from a foggy hayfield at dawn with a bottle of water in a holster at her hip, one hand holding a half-finished blog post in a composition book, and the other holding a laptop with approximately seventeen tabs open about data centers, county politics, vintage guitars, medieval fantasy audiobooks, and whether deer can recognize individual humans.

Neighbors describe her as “very nice,” immediately followed by, “but also intense in a way that suggests she could absolutely dismantle a zoning proposal at a public hearing with nothing but a legal pad and disappointment.”

A former newspaper reporter with the soul of a poet and the investigative instincts of a bloodhound who once got into the courthouse records room and never fully came back out, CountryDew spent decades chronicling the quiet machinery of rural Virginia life. Births. Deaths. Farm disputes. School board drama. Government over-reach. Somebody’s goat escaping during Founders Day. The kind of stories that actually matter.

Now retired from formal journalism, she roams the countryside like a semi-feral Appalachian intellectual, blogging at odd hours on “Blue Country Magic,” playing guitar despite orthopedic betrayal, and staring meaningfully out windows while thinking things like:

“What if the entire emotional structure of my childhood explains why I’m angry about this easement?”

Her natural habitat includes:

• stacks of books,
• unfinished projects,
• protein shakes she does not particularly enjoy,
• notebooks filled with devastatingly accurate observations,
• and at least one deer standing motionless at the edge of the yard like a cryptid intern.

She has the emotional range of a 1970s singer-songwriter album:

Track 1: wistful childhood memory about fireflies.

Track 2: rage about property law.

Track 3: grief.

Track 4: suspiciously detailed discussion of hay cutting.

Track 5: cozy fantasy romance.

Track 6: existential collapse in the Kroger parking lot.

Track 7: recovery via Fleetwood Mac and stubbornness.

Her enemies include:

• vague legal language,
• shoulder impingement,
• emotionally unavailable men,
• poorly researched local reporting,
• custom orthotics,
• and anyone who says “nobody wants to read long articles anymore.”

Her allies include:

• her husband, who wanders through life like a cheerful farm druid somehow immune to stress,
• old guitars,
• county history,
• A&W Root Beer,
• and cherished friends, who have now heard enough family lore to qualify as relatives.

Despite everything, CountryDew remains deeply, almost irrationally hopeful about people. She notices beauty constantly. Wildflowers beside gravel roads. Old songs. Strangers trying their best. The way memory lives in ordinary objects. She believes stories matter because they are evidence that someone was here and that their life counted for something.

Also she absolutely will spend three hours researching a single sentence because a date “didn’t feel right.”

Local legend claims that if you drive the back roads of Botetourt County at twilight, you may glimpse her on a porch with a guitar, muttering about county infrastructure, writing emotionally devastating prose in a Word document titled something like FINAL_FINAL_REALFINAL2.docx while a deer watches from the tree line like a silent witness to the entire American experiment.

*ChatGPT wrote this using the prompt: "Write an unhinged biography of me."

Eating Alone

I ran across an old op-ed column I wrote about eating alone, dated sometime around 2003. This is how that went back then:

Everyone looks at you funny, right down the guy behind the cash register and the cook who slaps the burgers on the buns.  When did eating alone become a crime?

I can ask this because I spent the past week skulking around the fast-food joints.  I hid behind books and newspapers as I ate.  Sometimes I scowled at the twosomes who cast pitiful looks my way.  Mostly I just tried to appear inconspicuous.

There are rules to follow when you eat alone.  The number one rule is to have reading material with you so you look like you're having a good time.  Laugh at the jokes on the horoscope page.  Something.  Anything to keep from having to look at other people, which brings us to the second rule: never make eye contact.  And the third rule is to sit as far away from other people as you can.

I ate in the mall one day, and there were six other people eating at the food court - all sitting alone.  We sat like this - lone person, empty table, lone person, empty table . . . you get the picture.  At least no one cast pitiful glances that day.  Everyone was in the same predicament.

I've often wondered what would happen if you went up to a solitary diner and asked to sit down with them.  Great love stories occur in that fashion.  The restaurant is full and solitary lady is forced to sit with solitary man, and true love blossoms over the shrimp dip.  Sigh.

But I never impose, just as no one imposes on me.  Why risk bodily harm or verbal abuse?  Why trouble yourself with certain rejection?

Therein lies the answer to my question of the crime of solitary dining - rejection.  Eating alone signifies rejection.  Everyone sees you and knows no one wants to eat with you.  Never mind that it's your choice and you don't like your coworkers.  You dine alone, so something is wrong with you.

Maybe the lone diners should form a club and throw some weight around.  We could get the restaurants to have tables with one chair.  And supply newspapers and magazines.  This would have an added benefit for the rest of the population, because you never know when a twosome will become a solitary diner, and someone will have to eat alone. 

When that happens, you can bet they will be unprepared for the experience and won't know what to do with their hands and minds while they eat.  They will need a little mercy, and a newspaper to hide behind.

But that was then. Now? Now I think eating alone isn't that big a deal. The reason? Cell phones. Now it isn’t the lone diner who looks out of place, it’s the person who isn’t staring at a phone. 

Solitude didn’t change. The etiquette did.

The Other Side of the Path

 

The Final Prompt: What is one thing you’ve started noticing more because of this challenge?

I don't know that I noticed things *more* so much as realized that I have all I need, really. There are many things wrong in my life, don't get me wrong, but there are also many more things that are right, whether that's the blue sky out my window or the ringtone on my phone, which is, appropriately enough for me, from the Lord of the Rings movies. 

Life can be harrowing. It can be painful. It can be sad. It can be lonely. And yet it can also be full of wonder. It can hold joy. It can be filled to the brim with sunshine and pansies. 

It's easy to fall into a frame of mind that sees only one way and not the other. If this challenge reminded me of anything, it's to always try to find the other side of the path if I don't like the one I'm on.

_____________________

Kwizgiver started a gratitude challenge for April. This is the last day. 

And that's her picture from her blog. I swiped it.

Thanks, KG!

Perspective

Just the smallest shift can change your perspective.

Recently I decided to move my computer a little. My computer, once squarely in front of the window, is now off to the side.

I have a different view from the same window.

Before the move, I looked straight into a small glen, a part of the cattle pasture. Brush and pine trees frame the space, and daily I’d watch the deer pass back and forth, from brush to pine, their noses to the ground eating grass as they went.

I don’t see that anymore. Now I see a grove of oak trees, and the fields stretching out towards the two-lane road that runs by my house. I see the cedar trees growing tall, majestic and larger every year. And I see a rose bush, presently leafless and dead-looking, though with this warm weather it’s liable to bud just any time.

Each day I watch the view out my window.

Some mornings loom gray and ugly, the clouds and dark sky proclaiming a rainy, windy day. Other mornings, the dustiness of night is suddenly brushed away by pink as the sun rises behind me. 

Time passes, the shadows change, the daylight flicks over the house, the eaves of the roof afford shade or not. In evening the sun shines golden over the mountains I love so much. The rays reflect the browns of the tree branches, the yellows of the hibernating grasses.

I see squirrels, groundhogs, an occasional fox, the deer I may as well call my pets. The cattle, too, meander past. Sometimes I stop working to watch the calves kick up their heels, running delightedly up and down the hillside.

I envy those calves (until I remember their ultimate future).

If I raise my window, I also change my perspective. Suddenly, instead of the quiet of my house, I hear traffic. Momma cows call to little ones. Crows caw. A horn blasts in the distance, maybe a siren.  Things are happening all around me, even if I can’t see them.

In the mornings, I sometimes drink my hot tea over the kitchen sink so I can watch the sun rise. Today it was brilliant pink, splashed in between clouds. The dark skyline of nude trees seemed to reach up to grab the light, so breathtaking was the magnificence of the day.

It's just March. There is still time to think of this as a new year, time to seek out new perspectives, new windows, new light.  Do we bask in the sunrise, or rejoice in the sunset? Should we keep the same viewpoint and never bother to change our minds? Do we stick with the tried and true and never see the critters roaming just a stone’s throw away?

I opt to look. Even the fat, lumbering groundhog is too cute to miss.

Maybe it's time for a new perspective. Not the grand, resolution-style overhaul we promise ourselves every January and abandon by February. Maybe we need just a small shift, the way moving a computer a few inches can open up an entirely different world outside the same window. Listen a little longer before you speak. Let someone finish their sentence before you're already forming your reply.

Sometimes the most important thing a person says comes at the very end, quiet and almost offhand, and you'd have missed it entirely if you'd stopped listening too soon.

The new view doesn't have to be dramatic. It might be a different road home, an unfamiliar store, a hand held when you'd normally just walk side by side. It might be three small words said out loud to someone who already knows you mean them.

Look out the window every once in a while. You never know what's passing by.

*A version of this ran in The Fincastle Herald in 2005. It's been revised.*

Tracks on Mars

I was watching video this morning of Perseverance roaming around on Mars - it went 1,350 feet yesterday; its longest run in a single time period - and I could see the previous tracks the rover made as it moved around.

And I was thinking, as I watch our society decay, decline, and destroy itself, that mankind might not make it to Mars for a very long time.

When humanity does make it there, say in 3535, this period of history may well be forgotten. We're depending so much on technology that is actually rather fluid and erratic that I don't think the past 40 years will fare well in historical context. Things that live in the cloud are on somebody else's hard drive, and who is going to ensure that can be read for the next hundred years? Not to mention a couple thousand years. Just as an example, the 3.5-inch floppy disks I still have hold articles I wrote 35 years ago, and I have no way to read them.

Looking at all that is going on today, the state of the entire world feels to me perilously close to becoming that bleak world of Mars up there - like humanity itself may be close to extinction. After all, one world war of nuclear bursts would pretty much destroy all that we cherish and hold dear.

Whatever brand of humanity rose from those ashes might eventually make it to Mars, and without records - because of course they will destroy all the records, eventually - no one will remember that we've sent things there.

They'll think they've found evidence of an alien civilization that once lived on Mars. The tracks may even still be visible, depending on the weather, kind of like we still find dinosaur footprints in marshy weird places.

That would be fascinating, wouldn't it, if humanity thought its own efforts were those of aliens. It's the kind of thing we do now. We propose that aliens built the pyramids, or drew those massive characters and pictures in deserts, or destroyed the Mayan society. Whatever.

A very long time ago in Reader's Digest I read an article about archeologists uncovering a big structure. Inside they found a skeleton on a bed, staring at a big screen thing. They surmised the big screen thing was some kind of god that the humans worshipped, because so many of them were staring at it.

It was amusing in a scary sort of way.

Anyway, I like space stuff, so go Perseverance! Make more tracks. And hats off to Voyagers I and II, also. Keep moving away from here. You may one day be the last remnant that says humanity existed, and wouldn't that be something.

The Hidden Value of an Education

The chapel at Hollins University

This NBC News article says that in these strange times, most Americans don't believe college is worth it. The question asked is all about money:

"Is a four-year college degree "worth the cost because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more money over their lifetime," or "not worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with a large amount of debt to pay off?"

Just thirty-three percent of U.S. citizens now think a four-year degree is worth the cost, according to the article.

What the article doesn't ask is this: are there are other values to having an education? Hidden values that aren't countable by an abacus, reasons to go to school that have nothing at all to do with money?

My answer to that is: Hell Yes. Maybe Double Hell Yes.

My college experience is vastly different from most people's, and I realize that. I took a long, strange winding road to obtain my three degrees. I know this question applies mostly to young people who are coming out of high school and heading toward four years of college and possibly $100,000 or more in debt. And that can seem daunting, especially in our rapidly changing world where a profession today may be extinct by tomorrow.

I can see the concerns about the high cost of a college degree, given all that is going on today.

But even accounting for that, I think a college degree has so much value beyond what one earns in the workplace that the question itself seriously undervalues what one actually gains with an education.

I took five years to obtain my two-year degree at the local community college. I transferred credits around and took eight years to obtain my four-year degree at a private college. I started my master's degree at the same college in 1994 and finally finished it in 2012. 

It was all paid for when I was done. Aside from my final year of working on my four-year degree, I did not take out any loans. And that loan was not a regular government "student loan," it was a personal loan from my bank that I quickly paid off. 

I worked the entire time I was taking classes. Sometimes I worked full time. Sometimes I worked part-time. I was also ill and had multiple surgeries that forced me to drop out of semesters or skip them altogether. That's why it took so long.

But the knowledge I gained from being at Hollins College? The place opened up the whole world to me. Yes, I took a liberal arts route, not a focused STEM route. And I learned, oh how much I learned! I learned about art, dance, music, philosophy. I learned about English and writing. I learned about the Middle East. I learned about film. I learned about children's literature and mysteries. I learned how to get along with people I didn't like. I learned how to deal with professors who were difficult. I learned how to see people for who they really were, and what they could offer, and I learned how to see things with a wide-open mind.

College opened my brain and expanded my horizons in so many intangible ways that I could spend the rest of my life trying to sum them up and never reach the end of the list.

This is what an education does. This is what learning is all about. It's not about how much money you make. That's just . . . what we focus on here and it's a devastating way to measure worth. I know many people who are not worth a lot of money but who are far better people than the richest person I know.

My work as a news reporter for the local paper didn't require a degree. I could have done that without the education. But college opened up my brain so I could ask more intelligent questions, peer into different sectors of the world, write about practically anything. Once you get to know me, I can talk to you about anything from NASCAR to books to poetry to how to fix a fence and what to look for in a bull when you need one for a cattle herd.

I consider myself a fairly well-rounded person. I am, by definition, a Jill of all trades, someone with many skills, not just one solitary mindset.

And I have my education to thank for that. College is worth it for reasons that have no price tag.

Imagine

We are coming up on the anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963. I was five months old.

My mother always told me she had me in a car seat and she was outside hanging clothes when one of the neighbors told her, and she went inside to listen to the radio, forgetting I was there because she was so upset about it.

Sometimes I wonder what life might have looked like if JFK had lived. What if that motorcade in Dallas had rolled on without gunfire? Maybe the country would have kept its faith a little longer.

In that world, perhaps I would have grown up under a different kind of light. The 1960s would have been the decade of moonshots and peace corps banners instead of assassinations and riots on the evening news. 

Maybe there never would have been a Vietnam War, and the adults around me would have seemed a little less weary.

By the 1970s, the headlines might have been about science and education instead of oil and scandal. The space program would have kept that glow of possibility, and the word government wouldn’t have curdled into something said with a sneer.

My first votes might have felt like joining something noble, not choosing the lesser of two evils. (My first vote for president was in 1984.)

Out here in the Blue Ridge, life would still have been slow. The cows would have still been in the pasture, neighbors would still wave, but perhaps the undercurrent of mistrust that seeps into small towns might not have taken root. 

The post office would still be the post office, not a symbol of inefficiency. Roads would get fixed because that’s what government does, not because someone fought for a grant.

Perhaps I’d have started writing sooner, believing my words could find an audience that still listened. The newspaper business might have stayed strong, respected, instead of having to justify its existence to people convinced every reporter was out to get them.

And now, in 2025, I expect this same farm would still look much as it does today, with fields and fences, deer running through the land only to vanish in mist - but with a steadier hum underneath.

Perhaps broadband would’ve arrived years earlier, powered by public investment in rural areas. Health care would be universal, not a negotiation. Schools would teach civics with pride, not apology.

Maybe there wouldn't have been so many school shootings. So many young lives cut down before life even began for them.

It’s a fantasy, sure. As a former news reporter and an amateur historian, I have read enough back issues of newspapers to know that the U.S. has always had issues. We were awful on civil rights, women's rights, and there was a Cold War going on that maybe wouldn't have ended without Ronald Reagan and which would still be ongoing.

Still, I like to think sometimes of an America that never lost its balance, where intelligence is admired and compromise isn’t considered weakness. Maybe that sounds like a The West Wing rerun, I don't know. 

But what I envision is not this world. Sometimes it feels close enough to touch, but it is always out of my grasp, even if I close my eyes and imagine the news breaking in with a headline that feels like progress instead of warning.

Regardless, I can go back to work or go outside to the fields that are still real. I can take a walk and think that, like Gandalf says in The Lord of the Rings, maybe the smallest acts of kindness are what changes the world. Things like listening, telling the truth, keeping faith with the land are what hold the line between the world we have and the one we lost.

Killing US with Lawsuits

A very long time ago, back before 9/11 and George W. Bush, before I was really paying attention to national politics and instead spending my time dealing with serious healthcare issues, keeping my home and husband going, and working full and/or part-time jobs while also attending college, I played a city-building game. 

I think it was one of the versions of Civilization, but I am not certain, so I won't claim that to be so. The game started you out as a nomadic human and eventually you built up your civilization to the current time period and beyond.

The one thing that stood out to me in that game was that at a certain point, it wasn't wars or terrorists or people being people that stopped my game to the point I walked away from it.

It was lawsuits.

Thousands upon thousands of lawsuits. Every move I made, the game threw a lawsuit at me. Every construction, every attempt to move forward, brought a lawsuit.

I remember watching helplessly as the "lawyers" represented by the game flung lawsuit after lawsuit at me. It was a game stopper, for sure. 

However, now I see this same notion playing out in real time. We live in the new world of lawsuits. There are lawsuits being filed by the government against states, against corporations, against real people who are just going about living their lives, and lawsuits filed by people against their neighbors, cities against counties, states against communities.

Every time I look around, there's another lawsuit.

Locally, this happens a lot. I looked up the lawsuits filed in Circuit Court against various departments in my county and stopped counting at 100.

According to Microsoft CoPilot, over 328 lawsuits have been filed against the current administration this year alone, with dozens more filed on its behalf. Everything from executive orders to regulatory actions ends up in court.

I don't know about you, but I miss the days of people sitting down and talking over their issues before immediately heading to court. I don't know that a lawsuit would stop a war - if that were the case, there would be no wars - but it sure adds up costs for one party and great funding for someone else.

Long ago, people resolved things over a beer and a handshake. Will we ever get back to those more mannerly times? Because right now, even a good bar fight looks like a better way to resolve an issue than what I am seeing on C-Span these days.

Blog Blast 4 Peace

 

Speak Love is the theme for this year's Blog Blast 4 Peace.

Love. It's the thing we all desire, the emotion that many believe will save the world. But what is it, exactly?

When I ask my husband of almost 42 years how he knows he loves me, his answer is, "I feel it in my heart." But he shows me he loves me in a myriad of ways, from small kisses to helping me change the bed linens on Saturdays. Sometimes he even washes my car! 

I show him I love him by taking care of him, making sure he's fed, washing his clothes, and keeping the house. These are acts of love, not chores.

Many people confuse love with control, though. A parent might say 'I'm doing this because I love you' while restricting their adult child's choices or demanding obedience. But love that seeks to control isn't really love at all - it's about power. True love empowers and trusts; it doesn't manipulate or dominate.

Other examples of control disguised as love include someone saying 'I love you' while monitoring their partner's phone, isolating them from friends, or making all the decisions. But that's not love - that's possession. Real love gives freedom and respects boundaries. 

Throughout history, people in power have claimed to act out of love for 'their people' while restricting freedoms and silencing dissent. But love that demands submission isn't love at all. It's dominance disguised as love.

And love is love, and it's what many of us hope will save the world. It's what Jesus preached:

John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.”

John 15:9: “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

Mark 12:30–31: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Matthew 5:44: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

Luke 6:35: “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High.”

John 15:13: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

These verses reveal the radical and inclusive nature of Jesus’ love. It is a love that reaches across boundaries, forgives deeply, and calls us to mirror divine compassion in our own lives.

It is the love that many of us have hoped would save the world. We've hoped for this for over 2000 years, feeling that in the end love will win. But those words have been twisted until they are no longer recognizable in many places.

Love is many things, and I believe each person defines it for himself or herself. What I see as love may be completely different from what others see as love. Perhaps love for someone is about control, and someone who does not submit is someone that person cannot love or believes cannot love him or her. 

Sometimes people talk about love and show love in many different ways. Dr. Gary Chapman has identified five "love languages" that people use to demonstrate love. Sometimes if people use one type of "love language" it may not be recognizable to someone who uses another type of "love language."

The five love languages are:

Words of Affirmation: Expressing love through spoken words, praise, or appreciation.

Acts of Service: Showing love by doing things for your partner, such as chores or tasks.

Receiving Gifts: Giving thoughtful gifts as a symbol of love and affection.

Quality Time: Spending meaningful time together, focusing on each other without distractions.

Physical Touch: Expressing love through physical contact, such as hugs, kisses, or holding hands.

Maybe love is all of these things and many more. Maybe love is whatever we want to call it, but I do not believe anything that causes pain, whether physical or mental, can be love. It isn't love to cut off food to starving children. It isn't "love" to destroy. Love creates or nurtures.

There are lines we must draw between love and hate, between genuine compassion and empty words, between actions that build up and actions that tear down.

So, what does it look like to speak love for peace? It might be checking on a neighbor who lives alone. It could be listening - truly listening - to someone whose views differ from ours, seeking to understand rather than to win. It might be volunteering at a food bank, writing a letter to someone who's struggling, or simply choosing kindness when we're tempted toward anger. 

Speaking love means acting with compassion, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard.

I try hard to love in all things, but of course I am only human, and I fail. I cannot always show love in the way someone needs, perhaps because I don't understand what they need. But that doesn't mean we can't try.

Let's all put a little love in our hearts. 

When a Man Is a Witch

He walks the edge of ruin and revelation

Some men don’t need spells to be witches. Their presence alone reshapes the emotional landscape. They speak, and the air thickens. They withdraw, and silence becomes a reckoning. They don’t call themselves mystic, prophet, or healer, but those around them feel the ripple of their power.

Folklore remembers these men. Literature gives them names. In real life, they often go unnamed—figures whose emotional gravity distorts time, memory, and meaning, men whose witchcraft is carried in their very being.

Some people carry power they never asked for. Not the kind granted by ritual or rank, but the kind born of grief, exile, and inheritance. A bitter word, a wounded silence, a moment of rage can act like spells when spoken by someone whose spirit is charged.

Heathcliff never needed incantations. His love and fury haunted the moors, reshaping generations with the force of his longing. Sirius Black didn’t cast curses, but his loyalty and pain echoed through every room he entered, a storm barely contained. Odysseus, clever and cursed, bent the will of gods and men alike, not through brute force, but through mythic cunning and emotional precision. These are men whose magic lies in presence and emotion.

These men didn’t always know what they carried. But the story did.

The man whose voice changes the weather may not believe in magic. He may scoff at the idea. But his words linger. His moods ripple. His absence becomes a presence. He is shaped by what came before, family fracture, unspoken grief, the ache of being misunderstood.

He may be estranged, scapegoated, or simply silent. But silence, too, can be a spell, especially when it is heavy with history.

To name someone as powerful, especially when that power is witchcraft that has caused harm, is a delicate act. It risks rupture. To remain silent is its own kind of erasure. So we speak in metaphor. We write in myth. We trace the outline without filling it in.

He may never know what he carries. He may never claim it. But the story remembers. Perhaps we all carry such weather in our voices, whether we know it or not, and perhaps we all hold a little witchcraft within us.