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Columnists

FRED FIRST: Approaching the Longest Night

Yes, you’re right—if you’ve even noticed—that this space has been neglected for some weeks now, and it has been hard to figure out where and how to jump back...

A Life Well-Lived: Shirley Padgett Lester (1947-2025)

Shirley Padgett Lester of Vinton went to her heavenly reward October 4. Below is the...

BOB BROWN: How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden “Presidency”

Permit me to think out loud as an old-fashioned person who respects authority, history, and...

JOHNNY ROBINSON: The Gratitude Perch

On the old road up Mill Mountain, part of Roanoke’s fabulous greenway system, there’s a...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: Sometimes President Trump Needs To Think Before He Speaks – Part II

Contrary to what President Trump believes, I think that Lakanwal was adequately vetted before September 2021,...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: What is Trump‘s Grand Strategy In Ending The Russo-Ukrainian War?

I fully understand President Trump‘s anger on February 19 in demanding economic concessions from Ukraine for the $350 billion, which Biden gave Kyiv since...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: Renaming The Gulf Of Mexico Is A Mistake

Hurricane Helene last September 24 quickly developed from a tropical storm into a Category 4 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico within two days....

DAWN CUSTALOW: A Roanoke mountain and a winter wonderland

A Virginia version of “Almost Heaven” is where my family calls home - Mason’s Knob Mountain in the Blue Ridge of Roanoke. Not just...

BOB BROWN: The Empty Self

John Locke (1632-1704), an English philosopher, Oxford Don, and physician, was widely regarded as one of the influential thinkers of the Enlightenment.  His theory...

FRED FIRST: For the Time: Being – An Invitation to Be Still

If all who wander are not lost, neither lazy are all who sit, still and quiet, in the woods. Simple stillness can be a filter...

SCOT BELLAVIA: First Week With the Third-Born

Day 1: (At the hospital) These pangs are worse than I remember. I am never doing this to my wife again. Heh, as if avoidance...