When I walked into the newsroom of The Athens News, nearly 19 years ago, the first thing I noticed was the clocks.
Get ready for the onslaught of stories and advertisements from people you probably shouldn’t trust, subject: prostate cancer.
It might be possible, please hear me out, that there is some aspect of the new Pope, Leo XIV, more important than whether he roots for the Cubs or the White Sox, as needful of divine intervention as those two teams tend to be.
Nowadays it is difficult to get a grasp on what we could reasonably call reality. Okay, fine, I’ll play. If that building on falsehood is not to my taste, I’ll start with what I know is real and work from there. I’m talking about photography. Of real things as they really exist.
This is likely a week we will remember as the beginning of something truly awful. The only question, really, is how awful.
Pope Francis has died. We should all pray for his eternal rest and that perpetual light shine upon him, as we should for everyone who leaves this life, both as a spiritual work of mercy and in hope that having reached Heaven, in part through our prayers, he will intercede for us.
It was interesting to note over the last few days the noise being made by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that he’s going to put to the test every crackpot notion he’s ever had or heard of to bring an end to the “epidemic” of autism.
If you live anywhere there is weather, you should probably have a weather radio. This is a bespoke device that renders the weather forecast, if that interests you, at the push of a button. But its real purpose is to make alarming noise when bad weather approaches, so that you might spend your final minutes lamenting that you have no basement. We had four days of, first, terrible storms then endless rain beginning a week ago tonight.
It’s a mystery. Yesterday, as I do from time to time, I stopped in at Coonskin Crossing, the country gas station and convenience store in Amesville. Looking around and as always wondering what it was about a Chinese virus that doubled the price of potato chips, I saw something I didn’t expect.
If it were a situation comedy — “The Office” comes to mind — there would be delight and hilarity in watching the now-faded orange man and the clown car holding his alleged national security officials zooming around in search of an excuse for their breathtaking incompetence.