Southwest Virginia Blogs

As the evening light was catching the woods by the channel or gut that goes out to the White Oak River, I was busy cooking sausage balls for our neighborhood Christmas party.

I think new neighborhoods are in general much better at having parties.  In our Roanoke neighborhood for the first few years we had went caroling and did a progressive party which one year ended up at our house with nearly one hundred people.  While it was fun when it was over, it was a lot of work getting ready to host it.  It doesn't take many parties of one hundred to curb your enthusiasm for neighborhood parties.  Now in our Roanoke neighborhood, we generally have a cookout in the cul de sac once or twice a year.  It's pretty easy on everyone except those that haul the grills.

We are lucky down here on the NC coast.  Bluewater  Cove, where we liver, has a clubhouse which serves as a great place to have a party.  I just got back from our 2006 Christmas party. I would have stayed longer but I needed to get home to study for an exam tomorrow.  If I had eaten any more, I would have needed a serious nap.

There was definitely enough food for an army.  My plate of sausage balls was one of three.  Our Roanoke neighborhood has been infested by cooking light which I don't mind the rest of the year.  However, you have to careful in sampling cooking light appetizers.  You never know what they might have cooked up.

Based on the food at our party tonight I don't think cooking light has made it to the coast.  There were three kinds of meat balls in addition to the sausage balls.  Then there was a delicious sausage pastry roll, pigs in blankets, chicken wings, sausage on toast, barbecue, shrimp, chicken salad in croissants, a couple of pasta dishes, spinach dip, and plenty of desserts.  It was a meat lovers feast though I will admit to skipping the chicken livers wrapped in bacon.

The neighborhood is only in its second year.  Maybe we can keep the party tradition going since we have a formal neighborhood association.  It's nice to get a chance to meet people that you don't often see.

Along with the cold weather, there is no surer sign of the holidays than neighborhood Christmas parties.  It's a grand tradition, which I hope not only survives the years but continues to thrive.

As the evening light was catching the woods by the channel or gut that goes out to the White Oak River, I was busy cooking sausage balls for our neighborhood Christmas party.

I think new neighborhoods are in general much better at having parties.  In our Roanoke neighborhood for the first few years we had went caroling and did a progressive party which one year ended up at our house with nearly one hundred people.  While it was fun when it was over, it was a lot of work getting ready to host it.  It doesn't take many parties of one hundred to curb your enthusiasm for neighborhood parties.  Now in our Roanoke neighborhood, we generally have a cookout in the cul de sac once or twice a year.  It's pretty easy on everyone except those that haul the grills.

We are lucky down here on the NC coast.  Bluewater  Cove, where we liver, has a clubhouse which serves as a great place to have a party.  I just got back from our 2006 Christmas party. I would have stayed longer but I needed to get home to study for an exam tomorrow.  If I had eaten any more, I would have needed a serious nap.

There was definitely enough food for an army.  My plate of sausage balls was one of three.  Our Roanoke neighborhood has been infested by cooking light which I don't mind the rest of the year.  However, you have to careful in sampling cooking light appetizers.  You never know what they might have cooked up.

Based on the food at our party tonight I don't think cooking light has made it to the coast.  There were three kinds of meat balls in addition to the sausage balls.  Then there was a delicious sausage pastry roll, pigs in blankets, chicken wings, sausage on toast, barbecue, shrimp, chicken salad in croissants, a couple of pasta dishes, spinach dip, and plenty of desserts.  It was a meat lovers feast though I will admit to skipping the chicken livers wrapped in bacon.

The neighborhood is only in its second year.  Maybe we can keep the party tradition going since we have a formal neighborhood association.  It's nice to get a chance to meet people that you don't often see.

Along with the cold weather, there is no surer sign of the holidays than neighborhood Christmas parties.  It's a grand tradition, which I hope not only survives the years but continues to thrive.

As the evening light was catching the woods by the channel or gut that goes out to the White Oak River, I was busy cooking sausage balls for our neighborhood Christmas party.

I think new neighborhoods are in general much better at having parties.  In our Roanoke neighborhood for the first few years we had went caroling and did a progressive party which one year ended up at our house with nearly one hundred people.  While it was fun when it was over, it was a lot of work getting ready to host it.  It doesn't take many parties of one hundred to curb your enthusiasm for neighborhood parties.  Now in our Roanoke neighborhood, we generally have a cookout in the cul de sac once or twice a year.  It's pretty easy on everyone except those that haul the grills.

We are lucky down here on the NC coast.  Bluewater  Cove, where we liver, has a clubhouse which serves as a great place to have a party.  I just got back from our 2006 Christmas party. I would have stayed longer but I needed to get home to study for an exam tomorrow.  If I had eaten any more, I would have needed a serious nap.

There was definitely enough food for an army.  My plate of sausage balls was one of three.  Our Roanoke neighborhood has been infested by cooking light which I don't mind the rest of the year.  However, you have to careful in sampling cooking light appetizers.  You never know what they might have cooked up.

Based on the food at our party tonight I don't think cooking light has made it to the coast.  There were three kinds of meat balls in addition to the sausage balls.  Then there was a delicious sausage pastry roll, pigs in blankets, chicken wings, sausage on toast, barbecue, shrimp, chicken salad in croissants, a couple of pasta dishes, spinach dip, and plenty of desserts.  It was a meat lovers feast though I will admit to skipping the chicken livers wrapped in bacon.

The neighborhood is only in its second year.  Maybe we can keep the party tradition going since we have a formal neighborhood association.  It's nice to get a chance to meet people that you don't often see.

Along with the cold weather, there is no surer sign of the holidays than neighborhood Christmas parties.  It's a grand tradition, which I hope not only survives the years but continues to thrive.

As the evening light was catching the woods by the channel or gut that goes out to the White Oak River, I was busy cooking sausage balls for our neighborhood Christmas party.

I think new neighborhoods are in general much better at having parties.  In our Roanoke neighborhood for the first few years we had went caroling and did a progressive party which one year ended up at our house with nearly one hundred people.  While it was fun when it was over, it was a lot of work getting ready to host it.  It doesn't take many parties of one hundred to curb your enthusiasm for neighborhood parties.  Now in our Roanoke neighborhood, we generally have a cookout in the cul de sac once or twice a year.  It's pretty easy on everyone except those that haul the grills.

We are lucky down here on the NC coast.  Bluewater  Cove, where we liver, has a clubhouse which serves as a great place to have a party.  I just got back from our 2006 Christmas party. I would have stayed longer but I needed to get home to study for an exam tomorrow.  If I had eaten any more, I would have needed a serious nap.

There was definitely enough food for an army.  My plate of sausage balls was one of three.  Our Roanoke neighborhood has been infested by cooking light which I don't mind the rest of the year.  However, you have to careful in sampling cooking light appetizers.  You never know what they might have cooked up.

Based on the food at our party tonight I don't think cooking light has made it to the coast.  There were three kinds of meat balls in addition to the sausage balls.  Then there was a delicious sausage pastry roll, pigs in blankets, chicken wings, sausage on toast, barbecue, shrimp, chicken salad in croissants, a couple of pasta dishes, spinach dip, and plenty of desserts.  It was a meat lovers feast though I will admit to skipping the chicken livers wrapped in bacon.

The neighborhood is only in its second year.  Maybe we can keep the party tradition going since we have a formal neighborhood association.  It's nice to get a chance to meet people that you don't often see.

Along with the cold weather, there is no surer sign of the holidays than neighborhood Christmas parties.  It's a grand tradition, which I hope not only survives the years but continues to thrive.

I have always been addicted to the news.  When I was in the eight grade, I was often called on to give the class a morning report on the day's news.  These days I have more newspapers to read.  Sometimes the choice of what to read is overwhelming. 

I have an on line subscription to the NY Times and the WSJ Journal.  I always stop by the Washington Post, and occasionally visit the Toronto Star, San Jose Mercury News, The Seattle Times, and the Halifax, NS Chronicle Herald.  One of my favorite papers is the Roanoke Times which I always read when I am home in Virginia.

I recently ran across this in an article in the Economist online.

But to normal, sensible people, I must come across as a hopelessly addicted news junkie. Who, other than journalists paid to do this kind of thing, has the time to read all those papers...

My wife has been saying that for years.  When I traveled a lot, my first challenge in a new city was to find a newspaper.  Today many large city newspapers without a national audience are under tremendous pressure.  Their readership is declining, and they're having to do everything possible to cut costs.  However,  I am convinced the same thing is not happening in small town America, at least yet.  I know there has been some consolidation over the years, when I started visiting North Carolina's Crystal Coast, I was impressed by the numerous newspapers.  Each has it own local flavor.  In a world of rapidly changing communications, I think it is fantastic that the printed word on newsprint still has great value.

The southern gentleman, RJ Berrier, in the picture to the left spent fifty years as a newsman in Mount Airy, North Carolina.  To him a newspaper was a way if not the best way to record local history.

I think RJ was right then and today.  The world he wrote about before his death in 2000 has not changed so much that we should give up on keeping a record of our local history in print.

If you have been around technology very long, you know that software comes and goes, files become incompatible, and yet the paper record somehow survives and with bits and pieces of our culture that might never make it to a CD-ROM or DVD.  The small town newspaper turns out to be an invaluable look at us as a people.

One the things that is so often missing even in on line versions of newspapers are the pictures.  Sometimes you get a picture that almost captures the essence of a person.  The lady in the above picture is my mother who died at the age of 93 in 2004.  I have no idea which relative took the picture that I have included in this post, but I have scanned it and will soon have it on a DVD.  My mother,  whom  I always considered the last grand lady of Pine Street  ,  always read her morning newspaper while drinking her coffee.  It was the way she started her day.  Often the first thing she would read is something that RJ had written.  Occasionally he was brave enough to write about her but not often.

As I wrote in "Love and Respect for Print,"  RJ believed that newsmen have a sacred duty to make sure that all names were spelled correctly.  It was only right since many people only made the news a few times in their whole life.

Today it is easy to drown in a sea of digital images.  Yet if the images have no story they will eventually meet the fate of all pictures without names.  I hope my posts provide context for some images that are important to and my family.  Yet the challenge is making sure that the images and text survive the inevitable disappearance of both Typepad and me.  It's likely the only real way to be sure that they make it for the next generation is to print them.  Perhaps if I can print my posts, they will become my own personal newspaper.  At least I rarely have trouble agreeing with the editor.

RJ would be pleased.

Living a life without trust would be a huge challenge.  I don't think even the most wired and connected individual can survive without trusting a few real people. 

Still finding a real person to trust is a lot harder now that families are scattered around the world.  I've never thought of trust as a national trend, but Sebastian Mallaby's article, "The Decline Of Trust," in today's  Washington Post makes some interesting points about the decline of trust in today society, in both business and government.

And the absence of trust can feed on itself. Leaders function under stifling oversight; this causes them to perform sluggishly, so trust continues to stagnate. But occasionally there is a chance to escape this trap: A shock causes trust to rise, leaders have a chance to lead and there's an opportunity to boost trust still further.

We've recently had a double opportunity. The boom of the 1990s boosted trust in business; the 2001 terrorist attacks boosted trust in government. But CEOs and politicians abused these gifts with scandals and incompetence. Such is the cost of corporate malfeasance and the Iraq war: Precious social capital is destroyed by leaders' avarice and hubris.

I often found it strange that my former employer, Apple Computer, would bring in high level management people from outside the company and trust their opinion far more than employees who had been working for the company.    I don't know if the  steadily declining trust that Apple showed it employees is mirrored at other companies, but I am sure that the lack of trust hindered productivity in Apple field teams.

Mallaby also talks about the Internet encouraging "acerbic negativity."  On the one hand Mallaby might be right if you let yourself listen to only certain parts of the Internet.

However, I would make the argument that new communication techniques arising from the Internet actually encourage building new webs of trust.  While there are parts of the Internet, like anncoulter.com, that I'll likely avoid, there are lots of other communities where I can find kindred spirits.

As someone who doesn't like large government, but believes that if we are going to have government it should be good government, there aren't any political parties locally where I really feel at home.  Yet through contact established from my Internet presences, I've met a number of people with similar beliefs.

Most of us who regularly post have communities of readers who have self selected to the point that  our audience cares about many of the same things that we do.  I trust  the opinions of many of my regular blog friends more than I do any politician.  I value their opinions as highly as I do some well known pundits.

So while Sebastian Mallaby might be right to indict part of the modern world, there are many on line communities where modern technologies are driving new levels of trust and cooperation.  Besides blogs, you cannot  discount the social changes happening through instant messaging and on line communities.

Technology hasn't created a virtual southern village yet, but I have a confidence in new ways of communicating that will bring us closer together rather than drive us farther apart. 

I don't believe we'll end up a nation of people listening only to their individual iPods or screaming at the rest of the world from our blogs.

Living a life without trust would be a huge challenge.  I don't think even the most wired and connected individual can survive without trusting a few real people. 

Still finding a real person to trust is a lot harder now that families are scattered around the world.  I've never thought of trust as a national trend, but Sebastian Mallaby's article, "The Decline Of Trust," in today's  Washington Post makes some interesting points about the decline of trust in today society, in both business and government.

And the absence of trust can feed on itself. Leaders function under stifling oversight; this causes them to perform sluggishly, so trust continues to stagnate. But occasionally there is a chance to escape this trap: A shock causes trust to rise, leaders have a chance to lead and there's an opportunity to boost trust still further.

We've recently had a double opportunity. The boom of the 1990s boosted trust in business; the 2001 terrorist attacks boosted trust in government. But CEOs and politicians abused these gifts with scandals and incompetence. Such is the cost of corporate malfeasance and the Iraq war: Precious social capital is destroyed by leaders' avarice and hubris.

I often found it strange that my former employer, Apple Computer, would bring in high level management people from outside the company and trust their opinion far more than employees who had been working for the company.    I don't know if the  steadily declining trust that Apple showed it employees is mirrored at other companies, but I am sure that the lack of trust hindered productivity in Apple field teams.

Mallaby also talks about the Internet encouraging "acerbic negativity."  On the one hand Mallaby might be right if you let yourself listen to only certain parts of the Internet.

However, I would make the argument that new communication techniques arising from the Internet actually encourage building new webs of trust.  While there are parts of the Internet, like anncoulter.com, that I'll likely avoid, there are lots of other communities where I can find kindred spirits.

As someone who doesn't like large government, but believes that if we are going to have government it should be good government, there aren't any political parties locally where I really feel at home.  Yet through contact established from my Internet presences, I've met a number of people with similar beliefs.

Most of us who regularly post have communities of readers who have self selected to the point that  our audience cares about many of the same things that we do.  I trust  the opinions of many of my regular blog friends more than I do any politician.  I value their opinions as highly as I do some well known pundits.

So while Sebastian Mallaby might be right to indict part of the modern world, there are many on line communities where modern technologies are driving new levels of trust and cooperation.  Besides blogs, you cannot  discount the social changes happening through instant messaging and on line communities.

Technology hasn't created a virtual southern village yet, but I have a confidence in new ways of communicating that will bring us closer together rather than drive us farther apart. 

I don't believe we'll end up a nation of people listening only to their individual iPods or screaming at the rest of the world from our blogs.

Living a life without trust would be a huge challenge.  I don't think even the most wired and connected individual can survive without trusting a few real people. 

Still finding a real person to trust is a lot harder now that families are scattered around the world.  I've never thought of trust as a national trend, but Sebastian Mallaby's article, "The Decline Of Trust," in today's  Washington Post makes some interesting points about the decline of trust in today society, in both business and government.

And the absence of trust can feed on itself. Leaders function under stifling oversight; this causes them to perform sluggishly, so trust continues to stagnate. But occasionally there is a chance to escape this trap: A shock causes trust to rise, leaders have a chance to lead and there's an opportunity to boost trust still further.

We've recently had a double opportunity. The boom of the 1990s boosted trust in business; the 2001 terrorist attacks boosted trust in government. But CEOs and politicians abused these gifts with scandals and incompetence. Such is the cost of corporate malfeasance and the Iraq war: Precious social capital is destroyed by leaders' avarice and hubris.

I often found it strange that my former employer, Apple Computer, would bring in high level management people from outside the company and trust their opinion far more than employees who had been working for the company.    I don't know if the  steadily declining trust that Apple showed it employees is mirrored at other companies, but I am sure that the lack of trust hindered productivity in Apple field teams.

Mallaby also talks about the Internet encouraging "acerbic negativity."  On the one hand Mallaby might be right if you let yourself listen to only certain parts of the Internet.

However, I would make the argument that new communication techniques arising from the Internet actually encourage building new webs of trust.  While there are parts of the Internet, like anncoulter.com, that I'll likely avoid, there are lots of other communities where I can find kindred spirits.

As someone who doesn't like large government, but believes that if we are going to have government it should be good government, there aren't any political parties locally where I really feel at home.  Yet through contact established from my Internet presences, I've met a number of people with similar beliefs.

Most of us who regularly post have communities of readers who have self selected to the point that  our audience cares about many of the same things that we do.  I trust  the opinions of many of my regular blog friends more than I do any politician.  I value their opinions as highly as I do some well known pundits.

So while Sebastian Mallaby might be right to indict part of the modern world, there are many on line communities where modern technologies are driving new levels of trust and cooperation.  Besides blogs, you cannot  discount the social changes happening through instant messaging and on line communities.

Technology hasn't created a virtual southern village yet, but I have a confidence in new ways of communicating that will bring us closer together rather than drive us farther apart. 

I don't believe we'll end up a nation of people listening only to their individual iPods or screaming at the rest of the world from our blogs.

It's all in the neighborhood.  The shot to the right is of some early morning fishermen near the Highway 58 bridge close to Emerald Isle, NC.  They're in a pretty good neighborhood for finding fish.

I just seem to be in good neighborhoods for not having to mow my yard.  I've written about our crew of middle aged mowers on the hill before in "The First Mowing of the Year" and "The Last Mowing," but I haven't mentioned the good luck I've had recently in not having to mow our two yards.

In early September, with some partners we closed on a second home near Swansboro, NC.  That meant that I picked up a second yard which needed mowing not long after closing.  Since we didn't have a lawn mower in Swansboro yet, we arranged for a lawn service to mow the yard.  We were back in Roanoke when they were scheduled to do the first mowing. I was surprised to get a phone call from them.  They said something like, "Did you get someone else to mow your yard?" They had found the yard already mowed when they went out to mow it the first time.

I immediately called the real estate agent and asked if he knew who had mowed the yard.  He said they had been trying to figure out themselves how the yard got mowed.  We were down a couple of weeks later when I was sure that I would find the yard needing another mowing.  It looked like it had just been mowed.  It was then that I decided there must be a lawn fairy in the bushes.

The next morning I saw my new neighbor outside.  It didn't take him long to confess that he instead of a lawn fairy was mowing our yard.  Though he didn't say it, I think he was so glad to have the construction done next to him that mowing seemed like a small price to pay for having a neat yard next door.

You don't find many neighbors like our new neighbor.  He immediately offered to finish out the  mowing season for us since we didn't have a lawn mower at the house yet.  True to form he mowed it again before our next trip down.  Now the centipede lawns in our subdivision on the coast have gone dormant until next spring so I'm completely off the hook.

Of course the lawn in Roanoke is a different story.  I did contract to have it mowed a couple of times and managed to mow a couple of times between the rain storms the last time we were up on the mountain.  As I wrote in the "The mowing countdown," my Canadian psyche has a problem with December mowing which is often required in Roanoke.  Even in Roanoke things usually slow down in October and November, but this year the grass has grown like spring.  It's been a challenge for the middle aged mowers especially considering how much we've all been traveling.

This morning I got pictures in my email from my across the street neighbors of the new "Lawn Doctor" service that was mowing our  yard.  It wasn't exactly what you might think.  It was another neighbor mowing my yard.  Once again I'm off the hook for a while.

All I can say is that I really know how to pick neighbors.  I've lived in lots of spots, but none of them before Roanoke and Swansboro have ever had neighbors who would mow my yard.  As I've often said, neighbors make the neighborhood.

There comes a point when you've said all you can say about our political situation.  I think that I've arrived at that point.  The newspapers are full of opinions so it's no trouble to find one that matches your own.

I'm for as little government as possible, and I'm going to leave it at that.  I am for protecting our environment.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to foul our own nest.  I would like the next generations to have the opportunity to experience some of the wonderful places that I have seen.

For a number of years we owned a two person kayak.  I spent many wonderful hours in Carvin's Cove exploring and even fishing. Mostly due to career demands at Apple Computer in my last years there, I gave it up.

Recently I passed my NC state real estate exam, and I gave my self a reward for all those long hours of study and classroom time, I bought myself a new kayak.

I had done some research earlier and decided on a Wilderness System Pungo 120.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any locally so we went on a GPS adventure.  It's rare when my Acura GPS screws up, but this time it really did.  What should have been a trip to Rocky Mount of slightly over two hours ended up being over three hours.  The trip back with some human directions and my new blue Pungo 120 only took a couple of hours.

The river in our backyard is the the White Oak.  It's a beautiful river.  Getting out on the river in the new kayak was a real pleasure.  It you could zoom in a little on the picture to the left you could see in the distance the bridges over the White Oak near Swansboro, NC.

I spent an hour wandering around and exploring which is about all the old body could take cramped up in a kayak.

The water is still warm, and it couldn't be much more beautiful out on the river.  It's a good way to completely forget about politics.

I need to find a better exit ramp than the boat ramp in our subdivision. It's a little steep for a graceful kayak exit, but that's just a minor problem.

On the way back in I did have to get cleared by the local air patrol, but he was pretty tolerant of me trying to get as close as possible for a photo.

Lots more kayaking pictures at "Kayaking the White Oak."

There comes a point when you've said all you can say about our political situation.  I think that I've arrived at that point.  The newspapers are full of opinions so it's no trouble to find one that matches your own.

I'm for as little government as possible, and I'm going to leave it at that.  I am for protecting our environment.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to foul our own nest.  I would like the next generations to have the opportunity to experience some of the wonderful places that I have seen.

For a number of years we owned a two person kayak.  I spent many wonderful hours in Carvin's Cove exploring and even fishing. Mostly due to career demands at Apple Computer in my last years there, I gave it up.

Recently I passed my NC state real estate exam, and I gave my self a reward for all those long hours of study and classroom time, I bought myself a new kayak.

I had done some research earlier and decided on a Wilderness System Pungo 120.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any locally so we went on a GPS adventure.  It's rare when my Acura GPS screws up, but this time it really did.  What should have been a trip to Rocky Mount of slightly over two hours ended up being over three hours.  The trip back with some human directions and my new blue Pungo 120 only took a couple of hours.

The river in our backyard is the the White Oak.  It's a beautiful river.  Getting out on the river in the new kayak was a real pleasure.  It you could zoom in a little on the picture to the left you could see in the distance the bridges over the White Oak near Swansboro, NC.

I spent an hour wandering around and exploring which is about all the old body could take cramped up in a kayak.

The water is still warm, and it couldn't be much more beautiful out on the river.  It's a good way to completely forget about politics.

I need to find a better exit ramp than the boat ramp in our subdivision. It's a little steep for a graceful kayak exit, but that's just a minor problem.

On the way back in I did have to get cleared by the local air patrol, but he was pretty tolerant of me trying to get as close as possible for a photo.

Lots more kayaking pictures at "Kayaking the White Oak."

There comes a point when you've said all you can say about our political situation.  I think that I've arrived at that point.  The newspapers are full of opinions so it's no trouble to find one that matches your own.

I'm for as little government as possible, and I'm going to leave it at that.  I am for protecting our environment.  It doesn't make a lot of sense to foul our own nest.  I would like the next generations to have the opportunity to experience some of the wonderful places that I have seen.

For a number of years we owned a two person kayak.  I spent many wonderful hours in Carvin's Cove exploring and even fishing. Mostly due to career demands at Apple Computer in my last years there, I gave it up.

Recently I passed my NC state real estate exam, and I gave my self a reward for all those long hours of study and classroom time, I bought myself a new kayak.

I had done some research earlier and decided on a Wilderness System Pungo 120.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any locally so we went on a GPS adventure.  It's rare when my Acura GPS screws up, but this time it really did.  What should have been a trip to Rocky Mount of slightly over two hours ended up being over three hours.  The trip back with some human directions and my new blue Pungo 120 only took a couple of hours.

The river in our backyard is the the White Oak.  It's a beautiful river.  Getting out on the river in the new kayak was a real pleasure.  It you could zoom in a little on the picture to the left you could see in the distance the bridges over the White Oak near Swansboro, NC.

I spent an hour wandering around and exploring which is about all the old body could take cramped up in a kayak.

The water is still warm, and it couldn't be much more beautiful out on the river.  It's a good way to completely forget about politics.

I need to find a better exit ramp than the boat ramp in our subdivision. It's a little steep for a graceful kayak exit, but that's just a minor problem.

On the way back in I did have to get cleared by the local air patrol, but he was pretty tolerant of me trying to get as close as possible for a photo.

Lots more kayaking pictures at "Kayaking the White Oak."

This past Sunday, September 3, was an important day for Covenant Presbyterian Church where we've been members for a number of years. 

Once again it was time for Covenant to grow. This time some classrooms are being added, the  narthex is going to be larger in size, and some other accommodations are being made so the church is much more accessible.

This is the second time since we've been members of Covenant that the church has expanded.  It's a tremendous group effort to grow while continuing to fund the many wonderful things that Covenant Presbyterian sponsors.

Rev. Robert A. Fiedler, who is co-pastor with Rev. Dusty Kenyon Fiedler, asked me to take a few snapshots of the groundbreaking event.  The pictures I took of the event are at this link.  Click on any individual picture to start the slide show.  Since there are a number of young shovel handlers that I don't know, I haven't added names to the pictures yet, but hopefully I will get to that.

There were some celebrities at the event. Three founding members of Covenant who were involved in the first meetings of our church forty-nine years ago joined us and helped start the digging for the newest expansion.

It was a very auspicious beginning to Covenant Presbyterian's latest efforts to meet the needs of their growing congregation.