Wow, Live Journal, I'd pretty much forgotten that you're owned by a Russian firm until I started getting slammed today with suggestions of entries by pro-Putin apologists who think the Ukraine War was Absolutely Necessary because there are little children giving Nazi salutes and Ukraine didn't let Donbas go off on its own peacefully the way Russia ( Read more... )

Yesterday a campus e-mail went out announcing the sad news of the sudden death the night before of our head swimming coach here at Ferrum College, Tom Calomeris. I regret that I didn't get to know him very well. But he was a library regular - at least once a week he would come in to check out movies and sometimes books. He would always smile. He ( Read more... )

This is not the entry I would like to have returned to blogging with after a month-long hiatus. But then again, this is an entry I hoped I wouldn't have to write for a long time, because (for reasons I'll make plain shortly) I wasn't going to write it while Jay was still with us. And I'd hoped that despite everything, he would still have years yet ( Read more... )

Along with doing some writing chopping today as I try not to examine the Camelot Book's Amazon ranking, plus sending out my first large check to the bank towards this idea of buying a house, I figured it might be a good time to remind myself of some simple but fundamental truths ( Read more... )

I've decided that worrying about kidney stone time bombs is silly. With one precaution I've started planning outings more distant than the nearest town, and it's a precaution I'd prefer to do anyway: Going somewhere with a companion or three. I like that better regardless of any other circumstances; I always enjoy outings more when they're shared ( Read more... )

The first seven years I worked for our college library I made a lot of friends among the students. In 2009 that came to a grinding halt ( Read more... )

By the end of the night, Mary declared the trip to be an awesome excursion.


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Since my birthday falls around the time that the leaves are changing colors in the B;ue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, I always like to do a hike or some sort of photographic excursion close at hand to the date. My original plan was to grab Laurie this past Saturday and head up to the mountains via the Blue Ridge Parkway--including Floyd County, ( Read more... )

BRING CHUCK HOME!

Chuck is a little dog, maybe a Kuchi. My friend Ken and his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan are trying to raise $3,000 to send Chuck home to America: "That seems like a lot, but it also seems like such a small amount! I truly believe it is reachable by our deadline: May of 2012. That is a few months before Ken returns to the U.S ( Read more... )

My friend thetalkingmoose offers up a couple of extra steps to my recent environmental deregulation posts to help critics put their money where their mouths are.