When I first read Christian Trejbal’s commentary in The Roanoke Times, the one entitled Southwest Virginia is for haters, I knew the feedback to the paper would be loud and filled with misplaced pride over the area’s so-called “values.”
Sadly, I was right. The message board on The Times Web site is filled with just the kind of hate that Trejbal so aptly described.
So, of course, I had to throw in my nickel’s worth:
Thanksgiving. A time when we pause and give thanks for what we have, although in this commercial age the day for many is simply a pause before “Black Friday,” the busiest shopping day of the year and a make or break time for retailers.
The rainy, windy weather that swept through our area on Wednesday struck New York for Thanksgiving, giving balloon handlers in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade a lot to handle.
Appropriately, Amy and I spent Thanksgiving with family, going to dinner in Christiansburg with my mother and younger brother.
When we moved back to my home county two years ago, I expected to spend more time with family. Sadly, there never seems to be as much time as we’d like. I’m busier in “retirement” than I ever was while “working for a living.” True, I’m not on the road more than 250 days a year but a steady schedule of volunteer activities plus a couple of part time gigs that each stretch into full time work mean less time than ever for family.
I find myself often wrapped up in the lives of friends. I take friendship very seriously. It goes back to another time and another place when you put your life in a friend’s hands and also accepted responsibility for theirs.
Friendship can be strong or fragile, depending on the personalities of those involved. I’m a difficult person to befriend. I’m opinionated, stubborn, arrogant, maddening and blunt. I challenge my friends to think, to consider and to weigh the consequences of their actions and I hope they will treat me with the same bluntness, honesty and compassion.
The 2006 NASCAR season is finally over with Jimmie Johnson taking the Nextel Cup title. With 35 races running from February to November, the stock car series is the longest season in professional sports.