Opinion

This week my thoughts turned to downtown Pocahontas– a 17 block National Historic District, the state’s largest such. I thought of how the businesses there and the characters associated with them had changed since I was a boy.

by Cara Bryant Last column was about how state government was originally meant to be the powerhouse and federal government was only created for limited, specific purposes. It is important for us to know why the federal government was meant to be limited, what was it limited to and how that applies to us today.

Unlike the song, Summertime and The Living is Easy. In my world, summer is terribly hot and humid, you can’t even sit out in the shade of a big tree when it is cool enough to do so. Mosquitoes are nothing more than frog food, that has the ability to fly and plague us, biting us ferociously all Summer long. Yes, summer is indeed my least favorite season! Sometimes the humidity makes even breathing a chore. The sun is seems to glare in your eyes no matter where you look. At present, all my flowers even after watering them every other day, are struggling and are not pretty. The youngest granddaughter, called from the other room last week, meme, this is a block of ice in the pool, kind of day! She remembered one hot summer from their childhood when I got a big block of ice and put it in their little swimming pool out in front of the office, in Reyno. Their eyes grew large in disbelief as I carried a very large block of ice and put it to float in the pool with them. Shrieking and squealing with laughter as they shivered and shook in the sudden coldness.

Over the weekend, the US Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 by a party-line vote of all fifty Republicans voting “Nay” and all fifty Democrats voting “Yea”. Vice-President Kamala Harris served as the tie-breaking vote, bring the final tally to 51-50 for the $790 Billion Act. The Bill will now move onto the US House of Representatives, where a vote is expected on Friday, August 12th. If the bill passes the house, it will go to the White House, where President Biden is expected to sign into law.

with John Allen French, Star Herald Editor Digging through the archives here at the Star Herald office is like, to me, digging through a treasure chest. We have a copy of almost every Star Herald published since 1880.

Mike asked me to wash his shoes. He said “They were too dirty to wear fishing.” How dang rotten do your shoes have to be that they aren’t suitable for wading through a muddy river? Have you ever smelled Catfish Charlie? Wet cotton seed cake? Worms...

Vernacular words and expressions of our forbears continue to provide amusement and occasional edification. Maynard Cafe regulars often use them for nostalgic amusementand sometimes, our august statures notwithstanding, we still think and talk that way.

There are certain things that I like to “kick it old school.” For instance, I don’t like to read a book by using a Kindle or my cell phone. I like to hold a book in my hands. I like to smell the pages of a new book and the texture under my fingers as I turn the page to a new world brings me joy. I enjoy reading cookbooks and making cakes from scratch. Writing thank you cards and sending postcards are some of my favorite things to do. But my favorite old school habit is keeping a calendar- like a paper one where I physically must write in the little squares gives me comfort. But when I misplace my comfort item (calendar) I am thrown into a full-on panic. I have tried keeping my calendar on my phone- but it doesn’t bring me comfort like my paper calendar gives me.