Columnists

MELINDA MYERS: 2024 Winning Flowers for Your Garden and Containers

Make some room in your garden or containers for the new All-America Selections 2024 National award-winning plants. These winning varieties are tested in trial gardens across the United States...

SCOTT DREYER: Rep. Cline Working To Stop Genocide Against Christians In Nigeria

Many are surprised to learn that the largest number of Christians who were killed for...

RANDY HUFF: Yearning for The Real

Thinking long and hard has mixed reviews. At least there's no utopia in the offing....

MORGAN GRIFFITH: He is Risen

As we approach Easter, I am always reminded of one of my favorite stories from...

DEVOTIONAL: Seeking Shelter

And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ,...

LUCKY GARVIN: Notes On The Civil War

An odd name for a war in that there was precious little civility in it. Watching the Ken Burns’ magnificent historical documentary, The Civil War,...

DENNIS GARVIN: Cock Fighting and Fake News

Cockfighting has a long history.  Humans took a natural tendency of roosters to resist any encroachment upon their perceived domain by another rooster.  Looking...

JEFF ELL: Fare Thee Well Beautiful Deer Filled Mountains

I didn’t kill a single deer this year. The last time that happened was 2002, the year we moved to Roanoke. And so now as...

MIKE KEELER: The Story of Two Motherless Children

Tyrus Wong was born in Guangdong, China in 1910. When he was nine years old, he and his father emigrated to the U.S. to...

HAYDEN HOLLINGSWORTH: Attitude Is a Choice

Mark Twain is purported to have said, “I have lived a life filed with terrible things; some of them actually happened.”  Most of them...

JEFF ELL: No More Chess – My Personal Checkmate

My experiment was a complete failure. The hope was to get better at something for which I have almost no natural aptitude. Specifically, the game...