The news from Boston over the past couple of weeks has been the stuff of nightmares.
As we all know, online maps can be deceiving.
There are things - plenty of things - I just don't get.
I heard the news of the Boston Marathon bombings just a few minutes after I had undergone a biopsy. An annual OB exam had revealed an enlarged uterus.
My husband gave me an e-reader more than 15 months ago. I was surprised. I had not asked for one, but he thought I would enjoy it.
When the terrorist attacks occurred in Boston during the running of the Boston Marathon, memories came flooding back of our own dark days in Atlanta.
Despite strong competition from several schools, Oak Hill Elementary again topped the charts in Newton 4-H this year.
Local philathropist, gentleman and sage Pierce Cline was well known for the life lessons he learned himself and taught to others through wanderings along the Appalachian Trail.
Suppose you buy a gallon of gas for $3. How much did it cost you? You say, "Williams, that's a silly question. It cost $3." That's where you're mistaken, because there's a difference between price and cost.
There's an interesting picture hanging in the bathroom of a particular shop here in town.
Mitt Romney's secretly recorded comment that 47 percent of Americans are "dependent on the government" and "believe they are victims" isn't the only reason he lost the presidential campaign.
Last month, I got caught in the massive hail storm while teaching in Stockbridge. I took a picture of the larger than a golf ball-sized hail that pummeled the houses and cars in the Monarch Village neighborhood.
The next time the illegal immigration advocates start whining about the poor Mexican workers coming into the United States to "do jobs we won't do" and to "make a better life for their families," please inform them that the porous borders between lawless Mexico and the U.S. are also letting in drugs at a scale almost beyond description and that Atlanta is a major distribution hub for the hombres.
My first election memory is from 1974, when I was 7. President Nixon had recently resigned, succeeded by Gerald Ford. The Democratic Party picked up 49 seats in the House for a total of 291. In the Senate, the Democrats picked up four seats for 61 total. But for me, my memories are more personal. My father, Newt Gingrich, lost his first run for the Sixth Congressional District in Georgia.
One of the most unforgettable people I ever encountered was my eighth grade American history teacher. In 1964, Greensboro was so tiny that all grades were housed on the same campus, so he was familiar to everyone. But not until I was 13, and in his class, did I get to know a Tennessean with some Indian blood in him, Mr. G. M. Charles. Now, the whole town knew Mr. Charles as assistant principal and ...
Let's say your side or candidate won or lost last Tuesday. Aren't you just a little bit embarrassed by what it took to win or lose this election?
The claims that President Obama is "anti-business" during the recent elections surprised me.
I write better than I talk, which is a good thing, considering how I make a living. I started writing "books" before I could write, embellishing "The Little Engine That Could" with my own version, rendered in preschooler runes on the end pages of my Little Golden Book copy. In high school I started stringing for the local newspaper, The Thomasville Times-Enterprise in Thomasville, Ga., and discovered that someone would actually pay me to write. ...
There was much happening in the news this week. Here are some of our observations:
A friend recently shared with me a musing of T. S. Eliot in which he wrote, "...and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."
We have a unique system of government. It began when we declared our independence from England on July 4, 1776. As a people, we had become increasingly unhappy with leaders in England making decisions that affected our lives and our livelihoods. Eventually, we were forced to a decision point: to fold under the tyranny of England or fight for liberty. As Patrick Henry so eloquently stated, "Give me liberty, or give me death."
I heard last week that Rep. Jim Marshall (D., Ga.) is no fan of a GPS system. The Vietnam vet is still partial to an old-fashioned map for navigating his way up, down and across his meandering Eighth Congressional District. One aide told me that a staffer recently tried planting one on the windshield of the congressman's car as they set out for a day of campaigning and Marshall swiftly snatched it off and tossed it into the backseat with a warning not to bring it out again.
A bankruptcy court judge I knew would tell people: "Pay yourself at the first of every month. That is your pay for living. Put that money in the bank. Then when you want to buy something, you can pay cash, and get at least three or four times as much as if you were buying on credit."
For years, I have spent time in classrooms observing teachers teach. I've done so to be familiar with the main work of our profession, classroom instruction. More often than not, I've found teachers working hard at direct "teacher talk" or "lecture" to students. Unfortunately, I've not always seen the kids working equally hard.
In my house, the contest for state school superintendent is as important as the governor's race. I have a son, son-in-law and now a grandson who are public schoolteachers and they, and all teachers, deserve a draw-a-line-in-the-sand advocate.
After all these years in the newspaper business and being in areas where natural disasters, murders and community political misbehaving's have taken place, it still catches me off guard and amazes me what type of story will really get readers' attention and that will get legs and be transported around the country.
If your only exposure to a newsroom has been through movies or television, the business of crafting a newspaper must seem exotic, fun, and hectic, an occupation pursued by people with perfect teeth and unmoving hair who look an awful lot like Robert Downey Jr. or Rachel McAdams. Reality, of course, is different.