Friday nights in Floyd Virginia are a celebration of country music, and on the first Friday of every month the artists of Floyd join in with art exhibits and receptions all over town. Art lovers and artists flocked to the Art Under the Sun Gallery to see the latest offerings from Flame Bilyue, Karen...

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote an interesting article "The Great Restructuring" in which he said, " Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy." I think he may be on to something. It certainly applies to our family. It takes too...

Are we moving toward a cash and carry economy? I see friends emptying 401Ks to pay off credit cards and others who are seriously discussing bankruptcy after extended periods of being unemployed. Their confidence levels mirror the downward path of the stock market. I know at least one person who stil...

Large flakes of Global Warming continue to fall and the trees on our south side look like a caricature forest. March 2009 is off to a good start. The snow is four inches deep in our locality and more is scheduled to fall and that is enough to make traveling extremely risky. It is quiet outside with ...

Super Salesmanship By any standards, Barack Obama is a world-class sales person. He created a brand image and a sales campaign that captured the hearts and minds of a majority of voters even though the product, himself, has no performance history or visible records of accomplishment that relate to t...

POLL RESULTS If you were watching ABC the other night, you may have seen Charlie Gibson smugly announcing the results of an ABC poll which showed 68% of Americans approved Obama's job performance to date. He was obviously very pleased by this. That didn't agree with my personal observations,...

This homely expression aptly describes the state of mind of many of us in this region as we contemplate the spectre of a recession, rising local unemployment and disturbing moves by a new administration in Washington. We are no longer feeling expansive. We reserve our personal optimism for local eff...

"I'm sure it will come in handy sometime" There are some of us who suck up odd bits of useful knowledge every day on the basis that it just might come in handy sometime. You might call this the "Hoover Principle". This is a real motivation driven by memories of time when we d...

When one gives money to someone in trouble, it is a good idea to see just why they are in trouble. Giving financial support to someone who is still engaged in self-destructive behavior is a frustrating waste of time and money. Many of us have experience with this on a personal level. We are now gett...

Thanks to Andrea Marshall, Floyd County artist, jeweler, and musician, we have the gift of these fantastic Christmas ornaments made from dried okra and a little bit of fairy dust. It is truly amazing how artists create beauty from humble elements.   Andrea's ornaments and jewelry can be fo...