Opinion

One day last week I was at the market buying bananas, broccoli slaw and Vidalia onions and when the kid bagging my groceries asked, “How are you today?” I told him, “I’m so hungry I could eat my arm.”

We both laughed and then when I got to my car I gobbled a banana in about three bites because, frankly, my arm was looking pretty tasty.

At Landmark Community Newspapers, Inc., Shelbyville, KY (which I serve as postal consultant after retiring in 2008 from a 35-year career), when we face tough economic times, we have to make tough decisions. But ultimately, our goal is to grow our business by providing services that consumers want and need at competitive prices.

When our business grows, so do jobs. If we do business right, our customers grow with us. In the end, making the right choices is right for the economy, jobs and our businesses.

On an evening stroll with my husband and dog last week, I was admiring the progress of several projects at Flat Run Veterans Park.

Playground equipment beckons small children to the center of the park.

The unique earth-bag structure, sponsored by the Cynthiana Rotary Club, has walls.

The presence of heavy equipment and long lines of trenches indicates a sewer line will soon be completed for the new Farmers Market building.

But among all the progress, destruction slapped me in the face.

As I was on my knees one Saturday afternoon, I had an epiphany.

Lest you think I was on my knees praying, I wasn’t, although Lord knows I should have been. And it wasn’t so much an epiphany as it was a random thought.

My husband and I were painting, he up on a ladder, me on my knees with a brush painting the bottom of the walls along the edging.

An elderly man walked into my office several years ago demanding that I tell him why I would print his grandson’s DUI in the paper.

I hadn’t been editor long, but I knew the answer.

“It’s public record,” I said. “We print records without exception.”

He leaned into my desk from where he towered above me, pointed his finger in my face and declared... “This place ain’t nothin’ that a can of gas and match wouldn’t take care of.”

To the editor:

In honor and memory of Apollo.

In response to the “rumors and gossip” column in the Aug. 19 edition of the Democrat, I feel it is time to get “just the facts.” There is a laundry list of “facts” which cannot be ignored or swept under the rug as the column reported.

Lately I’ve been fascinated by stories of people who grew up in church and now have abandoned the denominations of their youth, and sometimes church altogether.

In a very funny memoir, “Mennonite in a Little Black Dress,” Rhoda Janzen writes about having to wear frumpy skirts, granny panties and doilies on her head and eating lots of potatoes.

The one thing I missed most while I was away at college was the country.

I longed for tall trees, running horses, plank fences and one-lane roads.

Anytime I was home for a long weekend or break, I was content to drive around Harrison County with my windows down, enjoying the sweet stench of hay and cow manure.

Perhaps the smell reminds me of my childhood years on a farm with my farmer father.

My nephew said it best after suffering from a strong whiff of cow poop one afternoon.

“Smells like Papaw Dunny,” he said.

He was right.

The problem with ministers, Bible teachers and religion writers is that we’re human.

The problem with being human – one of the many problems – is the we read and interpret passages of scripture through different prisms, depending on our experiences, past teachings, even our sinful bents. Sometimes we make the Bible say what we want it to say.

It fascinates me how two people can read the same passage and come away with sometimes opposite interpretations.