All my life I have been fascinated by Compasses. The magnetic needle pointing true north. As a young lad traversing the mountains with my cousins, we would venture far. Yet we were not frightened or concerned as we used the sun as our compass to make it home safely. Per usual, a venture always turned into… Read more »

Undoubtedly somewhere along the line a family member, young person, or friend has done something that made you proud of them. A question I have for you is did you take a moment to tell them that you were proud of them? It seems like we live in a world of criticism – a world… Read more »

In the classic movie, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) plays a recent college graduate who is struggling to find his calling for his career. This week, you will likely have family or friends who will become graduates themselves and I suspect many of them will face the same challenge as Benjamin. During the spring,… Read more »

The crossword clue asked about a theme for this time of year. After a few seconds and having determined the first letter was “U”,  I filled in the word “Unto” (for – “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”). It worked! Unto – A rather simple word and not a word… Read more »

Having not taken a true vacation in a while, one week in February my wife and I traveled South. On the first day of our travels, we stopped for supper at a restaurant. The hostess said it would be thirty minutes and took our cell number to alert us when our table was ready. Thirty… Read more »

March is a crazy month in the mountains. On one hand, you can have 70-degree days with flowers and trees in bloom. On the other hand, you can have massive snowstorms – the March 1993 storm left 36 inches on the ground! It is also the month for the NCAA Basketball Tournament known and promoted… Read more »

Numbers can tell many things. For example, what exactly does 276 for 130 mean anyway? Is it $276.00 for 130 somethings? Or 276 for $130.00? Last Friday we had our Annual Read Virginia day at Wise Primary. At the end of the event, several of our folks stayed behind to hand out books, pencils, coloring… Read more »

One of my weekends this past month was rather simple. I began that Saturday working in the office (my rotation day) and had a customer visit. We caught up and I learned a lot about what was going on around town, especially with housing. After we closed the office, I ran to Walmart to pick… Read more »

In the early days of Zoom (and Microsoft Teams), we often joked about how we all looked like the Hollywood Squares game show or even the Brady Bunch. We would look through a meeting’s attendees and figure out who we wanted to call Marcia, Greg, or some of the stars from Hollywood Squares. We would… Read more »