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Columnists

BOB BROWN: “I Remember World War II”

On December 7, 1941, my sister, Edith, eight years my senior, and I were in Gray’s Drug Store, Hampton Boulevard, Norfolk, Virginia, a few miles from the U.S. Naval...

FRED FIRST: Go West At Last, Old Man

Decades of frugality have come abruptly to an end. I have made the choice to...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: Bring Back The War Department

President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a prescient and heartfelt speech in Chautauqua, New York, on...

FRED FIRST: Changing of the Guard

The theme for the Lenoir Words Writers Group this month is AUTUMN. And since I...

BOB BROWN: The Truth About Lying

Everyone lies! That’s the truth. Most people are relatively honest most of the time. The average...

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...

DENNIS GARVIN: Burnout Antidote

We hear more every day about burnout. I see it in the practice of medicine. One can point out some obvious reasons: Loss of...

BOB BROWN: The Healing Power of Kindness and Truth

"This patient is uncooperative, has barely spoken since hospital admission two weeks ago, and is at a high risk of escape and suicide.” The conference...