With piecemeal re-openings around the country, businesses are limping out of this housebound period, if they still exist to emerge at all.

I recall the story about a fellow who worked as an efficiency expert down at the factory.

It was 2:34 a.m. I was standing in my yard with my dog on a leash. And while sweet Fitz took his nature break, I kept my eyes peeled for the big black bear that had been spotted in the subdivision next door earlier that day.

Memorial Day was Monday, so now we are officially in summer. Where I grew up, Memorial Day was a week or two from graduation, depending on its date. And that has taken me down a path of nostalgia. June 11 will mark our 55th anniversary.

I had a US postal, hand-written, letter last week from a lady who lives near Whitesburg, in Letcher County. She is compiling a book about the history of Letcher County schools, past and present, and was asking if I’d be willing to share anything I remembered about the schools I had attended …

Six words for you today, kids. Six, little words. Ready for 'em? Talenti. Chocolate. Peanut. Butter. Cup. Gelato.

You may have heard about the fellow who was visiting with a friend one day when the friend asked: “Is your marriage a happy one?”

Governor Beshear continues to tell us to stay "Safe at Home", and he's right. For many of us that means a lot more time on the internet to work remotely, keep our kids up to date on school assignments, access telemedicine, tune into public meetings, shop for essentials, and stream something …

I watched exactly one YouTube video about how to cut your husband's hair before I started hacking and buzzing away on William's head a few weeks ago.

Bubba called his fishing buddy – the one with the bass boat – and invited him to go to the lake.

According to the grapevine, word has gotten back to Charlie Brown Road that, in last week’s column, I had been giving chickens a bad rap. As usual, the grapevine has gotten so twisted up in barbed wire, saw briars, poison ivy and spider webs that it‘s probably impossible to tell where it sta…

They say that adversity brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. And while I'd like to focus on those “bests,” I've become increasingly angry about the “worsts” that have surfaced.

When sickness sweeps through a community, institutions suffer.

My friend Rick Segal has been cooking for 58 days straight now. Every night, he posts photos of his and his wife Becca’s dinner and, with the exception of from-scratch pizza a few times and chicken and waffles twice, he hasn’t cooked the same meal more than once.

May has arrived in Kentucky, and rather than planning a Kentucky Derby celebration, a road trip to Pineville for the Mountain Laurel Festival, to Cumberland Falls to take in the moonbow, or to Louisville to jam at Louisville’s Kentucky Reggae Festival, we’re practicing social distancing and …

You may have heard about the city slicker who stopped in to visit his country boy friend late one evening.

To say the last few weeks have been tough on us all would be a strong understatement. We have all been greatly affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic, and each of us has taken measures to protect ourselves, our families, friends and loved ones. This has been an unprecedented time, and like…

Call me skeptical, and the Good Lord knows I sincerely hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that hundreds of thousands of people are going to wish that they had stuck to hoarding toilet paper and left it at that, instead of jumping right in there and buying up every garden seed, vegetable plant and…

One pudgy fellow asked an interesting question: If we’re not meant to have midnight snacks, why is there a light in the refrigerator?

Today is pandemic grocery shopping day. And can I just say? I am so excited! And, yes, that is an exclamation mark you see.

Loretta spent a few hours on the phone one day last week trying to locate several varieties of garden seeds and plants that her husband holds near and dear. She never did find Yellow Sweet Spanish onion sets, Boston Bib Lettuce nor Oregon Sugar Pod II peas, but she only called about half a d…

I think it's sort of funny that, during this pandemic, questions which I would never think about surface in my mind. Like, “Should we privatize the US Postal System?”

A mother was tucking her little boy into bed one night as a storm blew through the neighborhood with thunder and lightning.

Newspapers in the United States have traveled rough seas to the First Amendment freedoms we enjoy today. From the colonial Stamp Act through wartime censorship to today, when thousands of newspapers were slammed with the public health emergency known as COVID-19, people who work for newspape…

Old timers on Blair Branch when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s used to predict that thunder in February was a sure sign that it would frost in May. I can tell you, for sure, that on Charlie Brown Road, we had late night thunder at least three times during February so loud and rumbling…

It’s been roughly seven weeks since the coronavirus entered Kentucky, causing citizens to wrestle with its grim realities. As of April 19th, according to the Governor’s calculations, there have been 148 COVID-19 related deaths in the Commonwealth. Using the Governor’s “Age of Death” chart an…

Last week’s paper hadn’t been on the street for more than an hour before someone sent me a Facebook message saying they would give up reading before they’d do it on an E-reader. Almost simultaneously another message bearer wanted to know what brand of Android tablet I’d recommend.

The London Sentinel, October 17, 1918, page 2

So here we are (yes, I feel like this is an on-going, never-ending conversation) in the umpteenth day of the coronavirus epidemic-turned-pandemic. Now known as COVID-19 because, as it turns out, everything from the common cold to this novel virus is part of the same viral family.

For years, Rosemary Gaines has been clipping these columns out of her local newspaper and stashing them away. It’s a humbling thought that she considered each one a treasure to be preserved.

This is what my husband William’s new normal looks like.

I had an email last week from retired Perry County educator, Mike Caudill, who now lives at Carcassonne in Letcher County. Mike is an avid reader and is doing his part to encourage folks to read while we are all supposed to be at home, riding out this COVID-19 virus epidemic. Knowing that I …