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Columnists

SCOT BELLAVIA: Am I Proud to Be an American?

How proud are you to be an American? I posted that question on Facebook a few years ago on the Fourth of July. I wasn’t asking how proud or embarrassed...

BOB BROWN: “Portraits of the Human Person”

On the night of June 21, 2025, President Donald Trump said all seven B2 Bombers...

BECKY MAUPIN: The After Bedtime Search

Picture this: You manage to get everyone fed and the dinner aftermath cleaned up. Then...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: Israel’s Second Sum Of All Fears

I first heard about a dirty bomb in early September 1993 when an IBM coworker,...

BOB BROWN: What Happened to Happiness?

We can quibble about the origin, even the definition or meaning of “happiness,” but I’m...

Risking No Man’s Land By The Reverend Barkley Thompson

Thanks to Hollywood blockbusters like “Saving Private Ryan,” “Pearl Harbor,” and Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,” even younger people today know quite...

Don’t Forget to Read

by Hayden Hollingsworth A happy New Year’s event will soon be upon us: The opening of the new Roanoke County Library.  One can scarcely imagine...

Memories Of Christmas Past

by Mary Jo Shannon Christmases seventy years ago in rural Augusta County – at least in our family – were much simpler than Christmases...

Recipe of the Week: Christmas Soup

by Leigh Sackett The build-up to Christmas that is the Christmas season - or if you are focused on what matters most,  Advent -...

Christmas Musings By Joe Lehman

The feast of Christmas is both magical and mystical. And there’s much that helps make it so.  The most obvious are three: In Christmastide,...

Celebrating Marriage

by Keith McCurdy We have just celebrated Thanksgiving and are now upon the very Eve of Christmas.  How about celebrating a little marriage in...