The Nashville Leader

ANIMAL CRACKERS. My first official sighing of a Mississippi kite, last Thursday. This bird was headed into the top of a tall oak tree, and my hope is that it has a nest there. Since then I have had several kite sightings. Neat birds. I have not laid eyes on it, but I think I [...]

SIXTEEN BELOVED COOKS from our community prepared peach dishes, Friday, for a chamber of commerce ‘coffee’ which promoted the coming Peach Blossom Festival. The public was invited to come to the coffee, taste the dishes and vote on their favorites. It’s a heavy responsibility, but somebody’s got to do it. Also, by making a choice [...]

ANIMAL CRACKERS. Our John Balch reports seeing several Orioles (orchard and Baltimore) in the woods near his place below Narrows Dam. The Oriole is absolutely one of the most beautiful of America’s birds. And flights of hungry cattle egrets now make their way to and from work daily. Just imagine how many bugs they’ve eaten [...]

SO THERE I WAS. Standing one step from the top of an 8-ft. aluminum ladder, shivering in the cold downpour and just a little bit concerned about lightning which seemed to be striking only inches away. How do I get into such situations? LET ME retreat a step and tell you about events leading to [...]

OIL SPILL. Perhaps  you’ve kept up with the big oil ‘spill’ at Mayflower, a small burg northwest of Little Rock. An underground pipeline in a residential neighborhood burst on March 29, forcing residents to move out. Oil has threatened local water supplies in central Arkansas. Recently the oil company has told neighborhood residents they could [...]

THE EXPERIENCE OF Arkansas’s WWII Japanese internment camps. On the front page of the Arkansas section of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette this past weekend was a touching article about a man returning to Jerome where he was interned as a child. In the edition of the Arkansas Alumni Association magazine delivered this week, there was [...]

EAR CACTUS. It happens to the guilty and the innocent alike. I can feel these stiff silver bristles poking out of my ears, but my barber can’t see them. I can’t see them either because my eyes and my ears are on different sides of my head. My barber swears to me that he’d trim [...]

HEALTH PROBLEM. I am experiencing a problem with my left foot. It is covered in fungus and mold, and the toenails have turned black. I believe I have permanent athlete’s foot (that apostrophe makes ‘athlete’ singular, possessive). The right foot is just fine, thank you. But not the left one. I don’t need a podiatrist [...]

1.4 Disaster: Stalled traffic is bad news for strained senior bladder UPDATE ON MERIT SCHOLARS: Add Tom DeBlack, Greg Jones and David Schwope to the list. More on them later. ●-●-● UPDATE ON THE ‘FROG.’ Fitness Reaching Older Gen’s is what F.R.O.G. stands for (and both of my regular readers will remember that I took [...]

MERIT SCHOLARS. Relda Aylett, who just happens to be a retired teacher, reminds me that daughter, Lori, was a National Merit Scholar Finalist winner in 1983. Lori took her scholarship to the UofA at Fayetteville and got a law degree. She’s a practicing attorney in Houston now, and has a lovely daughter of her own. [...]

MERIT SCHOLARS. The recognition of our resident NHS genius, Jonathon Lance, the first National Merit Scholar in many moons has elicited memories by some geezers who actually remember other winners and who say that young Lance is joining elite company. My own classmate, Jimmy Chandler, was a finalist winner who went to the UofA, thence [...]

THE GOOD EARTH. Forsythia (yellow bells) are barely blooming. I see little red buds on the tips of my — what else? — redbud tree. This redbud is a transplant of 30+ years ago from a neighbor who got tired to seeing my bare yard. More of the tree’s limbs are now dead than alive [...]

THE GOOD EARTH. Possibly inspired by my recent exotic cooking reports, Nashville native Cordelia Tollett Lyons shares recipes using Kudzu, and she says the main ingredient can be found in abundance between Saratoga and Fulton on Highway 355, between June and October every year. The recipes are for Kudzu salad, Kudzu Colada (whatever in the [...]

SOME STORIES JUST develop a life of their own. The account of my Arkie Road Trip to see the WWII Japanese Internment Camps at Rowher and Jerome has spawned many calls and comments. The most recent was a in large envelope from friend Parker Westbrook, now of Little Rock, who keeps up with things in [...]

WHO’S ON FIRST, and who is at fault? Just so both of my regular readers will know — the grammatical error in the name of the FROG exercise/flexibility program for senior citizens at Howard Mermorial Hospital is the fault of a bunch of ignorant Nebraska sodbusters. “Fitness Reaching Older Gen’s” is the whole name of [...]

NOT THE AMPHIBIAN KIND. Did I tell you that I’m now a “FROG?” It stands for “Flexibility R(something) Older Gen’s.” I admit to being an Older Gen, therefore I can’t remember what the R stands for. The program is put on by Howard Memorial Hospital, and it is supposed to help restore flexibility and balance [...]

HOWARD COUNTY is still one of the rare places where the outcome of a political race was actually determined by the flip of a coin. A visitor to “The Leader” last week was the multi-talented David Young who recalled his race for county judge as a 29-year-old storekeeper and logtruck driver, 40-plus years ago. His [...]

WHO ELSE SAW the huge ring, or halo, around the moon, last weekend? I’ve seen a ring around the moon many times — it supposedly predicts rain — but never a ring soooooo big that reached out so far from the moon. On Sunday night there was a star gleaming from within the ring’s collar. [...]

THE FIRST NOEL The first Noel the angel did say  Was to certain poor shepards in fields as they lay:  In fields where they lay a keeping their sheep  On a cold winter’s night that was so deep.  Noel Noel Noel Noel  Born is the King of Israel.  ●-●-● This popular carol is actually an [...]