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Columnists

Scott Dreyer: Remembering VE Day

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men living and dead, and that I must...

FRED FIRST: Moms Live Forever

She would have celebrated her 100th birthday this September, the birthday month in our family. Had...

ROBERT L. MARONIC: Semi-Singular Praise Of Governor Gavin Newsom (D-CA)

There are many aspects of California, which I strongly dislike: exorbitant state and local taxes,...

FRED FIRST: Nature Notes: Early May

Finally I am getting out a bit onto the trails before spring is fully gone...

BOB BROWN: “Teach Us to Number Our Days”

I was healthy and fit, a proponent of physical exercise, weighed myself daily with pleasing...

The Oceans: Not Too Big to Fail

Let’s imagine for a moment that we live in a fictional future world—a world where, for fifty years, the planet’s plant life on...

When You Need “Someone With Skin On”

The funeral is over and family and friends who came to express their condolences have turned their attention to other matters. Loneliness and...

Recipe of the Week: Roasted Artichoke and Virginia Ham Stuffed Idaho Potatoes

I don’t know much about football but I do know potatoes and ham and when the Idaho potato people sent me this recipe...

Ghoulies and Ghosties in the Roanoke Valley

I’ve always been enchanted by an ancient Cornish Litany that goes like this: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, and things that go bump...

Are You Prepared? And If So, Why?

Elizabeth Myer Boulton recalls that, during the energy crisis, her grandmother “became obsessed with keeping the needle of her Buick’s gas gauge above...

Lessons From Walt

Walt was an old man when I first met him in seventh grade. Oh, he was my age mathematically but a galling poverty...