A Charlie Brown Christmas celebrated its 50th anniversary last year. When it premiered I doubt TV executives expected the 30-minute special to still be airing annually. Since DVDs and the Internet hadn’t been invented, they sure didn’t think it would still be selling copies online during the 21st century. Several years ago, my wife picked up…
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The last time Christmas fell on Sunday (as it does this year), in 2011, I remember seeing a news story about a significant percentage of churches that weren’t holding services. That’s one reason I’m pleased that ours will meet on Dec. 25. I know there are all kinds of reasons that some don’t meet on…
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It’s that time of year when millions go searching for good Christmas movies. We have certain favorites, especially August Rush, whose primary tie to the season is the fact it debuted in our area in early December of 2007. It’s one of those films that never grows old. Because it is so inspiring and the…
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Whether Obamacare’s 22 percent premium hikes announced shortly before the presidential election helped sink Hillary Clinton’s campaign will be parsed by political commentators for years to come. However, this much is certain: no matter what Donald Trump and a Republican-controlled Congress do next year, the die is already cast for 2017. What you see now…
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We’re only one week away from Thanksgiving, a day for which rabid football fans are grateful. With an NFL triple-header, that means—if you include the pre-game chat—one can watch gridiron action from noon until nearly midnight. However, the thing that no pigskin aficionado appreciates is the prospect, no matter how small, that the Vikings-Lions, Redskins-Cowboys,…
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Until I read about the pending opening of a Clean Eatz franchise in Huntington over the summer, I had never heard of the North Carolina-based restaurant chain. I was impressed with their proclamation that menu items are a maximum 500 calories, and that the owners’ goal is to help people adjust to a healthy lifestyle.…
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Unless you’ve already taken advantage of early voting, Tuesday will mark the latest venture into selecting our nation’s next president. And if you’re like a large swath of the American public, you may be filled with dismay over the choices. It was the third such event I had attended this year. The first two,…
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Unless there is some earth-shattering development in the next two weeks, Hillary Clinton will become the nation’s next president. Donald Trump’s campaign has been on the decline ever since his crude remarks about women 11 years ago became public knowledge. (Pause here to say that a woman I know very well remarked recently, “Anyone who…
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The presidential debates have now concluded, but I can’t say they did much to help me make up my mind about how I will vote in less than three weeks. Whether it was Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump—or their running mates—going at each other, it felt more like watching dueling sound bites. Or listening to…
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Though Blink was published nine years ago, an observation by author Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller is more relevant than ever. A treatise on the split-second decisions we often make, at one point Gladwell talked about the negative reactions people had to various stimuli. As the son of a Jamaican mother, one wouldn’t consider him a…
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