Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day, and many of us will observe the day with family and friends, a big meal, and perhaps watching some football. Writers for years have urged their readers to reflect on the larger meaning of thanksgiving, but rather than put the burden on you, I’m going to talk about what I’m thankful for this year.
Nov. 17, 2022 Editor, The News-Gazette: Thanksgiving is that other great American holiday, the cool fall one without the summer fireworks. Like the Fourth, Thanksgiving has a simple message: to give thanks after a good harvest. That harvest was once confined to our fields. Now we give thanks for a much larger harvest — the blessings in our lives. And as Americans we believe that our next harvest will be better than the last. We call it progress.
Nov. 21, 2022 The News-Gazette: Thanks News-Gazette for helping keep us informed during recent elections! No doubt it’s tricky sharing multiple points of view about often controversial, complex issues. But the fact we attempt this is a strength of democracy, free press. There’s also still top-down leadership, bottom-up change. Meaning, regardless of people in power, individuals can always work toward positive changes in small ways. At some point, leaders are elected to help push programs already begun by many hard working well-intentioned people.
Nearly half of the Rockbridge area’s registered voters – 49.2 percent, to be exact – turned out for last week’s election. That’s a pretty good turnout for a non-presidential election year. There was genuine interest in voting, even if, for most of the local electorate, ballots were only being cast in a congressional race in which the outcome was never really in doubt.
Nov. 10, 2022 Editor, The News-Gazette: I have written letters about the need to move Lee and Washington and their families and the items in the Lee Chapel Museum and Lee’s horse to a quiet place down south and Mt. Vernon, respectively.
With each passing day there are fewer and fewer among us who were part of what has come to be known as the Greatest Generation – veterans who took part in World War II. Of the 16 million Americans who served in the war, only 167,284 are still living, according to the latest statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
