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The Old Farmer’s Almanac
“The almanac hung from a loop of string fastened to a nail alongside the fireplace where it was handy for ready reference 365 days of the year.” — John Parris, 1914-1999 We were reading one of John Parris’s old columns recently and ran across a reference to “The Old Farmer’s Almanac.” He noted that it came with a hole in the corner, so it could be hung up in the barn, outhouse, kitchen or porch. Is The Almanac still popular, we wondered...
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Opening ever so slightly
It is the kind of surprise for which every ambitious politician must be prepared: the unexpected decision by an incumbent elected official to retire. It is, my friend Jay Rivers told me, the kind of window of opportunity that opens ever so slightly and rarely. Be ready to decide quickly and pounce on the unexpected opportunity, before the window closes as a result of others’ decisive action. John Spratt, the former South Carolina congress...
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I don’t even know her name
Dear Editor, Instead of complaining, I am writing to praise a member of our community because she definitely deserves it. I don’t even know her name. I am a 50-something year old woman, and I am a caretaker to an 89-year-old disabled WWII veteran. On Sunday, Jan. 22, he and I drove to Food Lion in Hamlet to get groceries. In the car, he handed me $50 and I went inside to get the food while he waited in the car. When I got to the check-o...
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That is All: Smile for the camera
“Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome away …” — Paul Simon Late last year, a boyhood friend, Al Pratt, sent me a private message on facebook saying he had discovered some old photographs I might be interested in. He said he’d found a photo of my Mom, and a photo of my children when they were just little runts. What arrived in my mailbox a few days later was wonderful; a special and thoughtful gift from an old friend. Those two weathe...
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Searching for Shangri-La
“Yet your soul was not in it?” — James Hilton, 1900-1954 James Hilton’s 1933 novel, “Lost Horizon,” captured the public imagination during the hard times of the Great Depression. The novel describes the mythical land of Shangri-La, an idyllic paradise in the Himalayas, stumbled upon by four British and American survivors of a plane crash. High in the clouds of Tibet, they found a hidden monastery where people enjoy perfect health, excep...
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Does time heal all wounds?
Will John Edwards someday be the new Newt Gingrich? Where did this crazy question come from? To get the answer, read on. First, we should wrestle with the questions political experts have been stuttering over since Gingrich’s stunning upset of Mitt Romney in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary last weekend. How can a candidate like Gingrich get over the deathblows his campaign suffered in Iowa and New Hampshire? How can...
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Opinion Poll for Saturday, Jan. 28
Our poll question of the week will be published on the opinion page, and on our website at www.yourdailyjournal.com. Last week’s question: Are you envious of the areas of the country blanketed in snow? • 69 percent — No • 31 percent — Yes This week’s question: President Obama recently denied a permit for the contentious Keystone pipeline proposal, which would have linked a vast oil deposit in Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the Te...
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First Light: Coming through the fog
Seems like North Carolina can’t make up her mind these days. The end of 2011 felt like an Indian Summer on steroids, with 80-degree weather in November and December. Some people say it’s Global Warming, but my dad said it’s like the winters he remembers from his childhood in Raleigh. Now some forecasters are calling for snow. Traditional folks say if there is thunder and lightning in the winter, snow will follow in seven to 10 days. A misty...
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County commissioners worked to solve expensive problem
In response to Ms. England’s January 19 letter to the editor and her follow-up comments. The Richmond County Board of Commissioners became involved in the Fox Road well contamination situation in August of 2008 when they were notified by the State of NC that there was contamination in the Fox Road area. The Commissioners immediately went to work with grant agencies and elected officials on the State and Federal level trying to obtain funding ...
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Deen isn’t saying ‘eat the entire cake’
So Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes. You know that, don’t you? It has been repeated on every newscast and in every daily newspaper in the English-speaking world. Paula Deen — the queen of Southern cooking who deep-fries cheesecake and flavors her quiche with a pound of bacon, the stories say — has Type 2 diabetes. I know what they’re doing. They’re implying that, see there, if you cook the way Paula Deen cooks, you’re going to come down wit...
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Ken Goodman
The Raleigh Report
The full General Assembly is set to return to session in February, but in the meantime I and many of my fellow members remain busy with interim committee meetings and budget discussions. In addition, I am staying active here at home supporting our community. An Appropriations Committee comprised of members of both the House and the Senate met this week to get updates on the state’s budget. Committee members learned that Gov. Perdue and her ...
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Learning about North Carolina from a favorite mystery writer
What is the best book I could read to learn about North Carolina? I get this question all the time from people who know about my interest in books about our state and those written by our great writers. My answer differs, depending on what kind of books my questioner likes to read. For instance, if the questioner likes murder mysteries, I will tell them to read one of the 17 books in Margaret Maron’s Deborah Knott series. Knott is a sma...
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The Personal Touch
It’s 2012 and the future is here. Talking machines do our work for us, cars park and drive themselves, and tools are transforming into apps. Every day technology moves closer to merging with the biological world, and while that is wonderful I also find it terrifying. When I look around I see the effects of my generation growing up with a TV for a babysitter, and the Internet for a constant companion. Kids today wish they could just delete t...
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Washington Report
As we work to rein in spending and get our nation’s debt and deficits under control, I’ve heard from many of you who are concerned about proposed cuts affecting our active duty military and veterans. Across-the-board cuts often have the unintended consequence of hurting programs and agencies that are effective, while not doing enough to eliminate some of the flawed and inefficient aspects of government that we can surely do with less of, or d...
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One of the greatest evangelists of his time
Dear Editor, Just recently an opinion letter attributed “when the family goes, so goes America” as spoken by Billy Graham in 1954. However, similar words came from a great evangelist of the nineteenth century in a message on the ten commandments. I quote: “I believe that Sabbath question today is a vital one for the whole country. It is the burning question of the present time. If you give up the Sabbath the church goes; if you give up th...
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