I’m a country boy, which also means I’m a meat-and-potatoes guy.  A doctor-mandated low starch and low cholestorol diet means no potatoes but I can still eat meat and I like the ribeye that Julie Arrington and Kerry Underwood serve at Oddfellas Cantina.

So I eat it often, so often that Julie and Kerry have renamed the steak "Doug’s ribeye" on their new menu.

Try it the next time you eat at Oddfellas. By any name, it’s a good steak.

A story making the rounds in local banking circles tells of an upscale couple in a big house at Smith Mountain Lake. Behind in their jumbo mortgage they mailed the keys to their house along with keys to both of their luxury cars to First National Bank of Christiansburg and walked away from the house and a lifestyle they could no longer afford.

Bankers tell me such stories are common nowadays and often true. The housing industry, living too large for too long on a boom that had to bust, is in trouble and with them the banks and mortgage brokers who cut too many corners and handed out money with too much ease to those who really couldn’t afford to buy.

We have friends trapped in this cycle, some forced to sell their homes at a loss to get out from under a heap of trash debt.

A banker friend tells me this mortgage crisis in this country may surpass the savings and loan junk bond debacle that struck in the go-go eighties.

Trouble has already hit the urban areas and it’s coming our way. And that starts with "T" and that rhymes with "D" and that stands for "debt."

From the grapevine comes word that the women’s club of Floyd has voted overwhelmingly to invite racist revisionist "author" Gary Walker back to next year’s arts and crafts fair.

Floyd attorney Dale Proffit apparently left the ladies quaking in their seats with dire warnings of legal action not only from Walker but also from the hoard of Confederate sympathizers that he said would rise up in righteous indignation and haul them into court (a threat that I think is as flawed as Walker’s so-called "historical research").

The vote has fractured the membership of the club with some choosing to quit over the action and others taking self-imposed leaves of absence. It also tempts professional rabble-rousers like me to consider turning the matter into a personal crusade. I’d like to think the women’s club did not wish to see their annual arts and crafts fair turn into a bully pulpit for racism but that is exactly what they have done with their vote.

I’m not surprised Profitt was able to scare the bejesus out of the ladies although Dale is not one I would call on for advice on Constitutional law. His legal practice is mostly real estate transactions and helping locals draw up wills. Constitutional lawyers and professors say the First Amendment has nothing to do with the whether or not the ladies club can or should allow an illiterate racist author at an event supposedly dedicated to arts and crafts.  As a private organization they are free to accept or ban anyone they wish.

The women’s club had a chance to show that Floyd is not a home for Southern-fried racism but, instead, they made a bad decision based on fear, ignorance and questionable advice. It is a decision they will have to live with.

No matter how loudly they claim their decision is not racist, it is — from my view as both a native-born Southerner and a Floyd Countian — at the very least a passive acceptance of racism in our midst.

Blue Ridge Muse, the studio and gallery, is now open at The Village Green at 201 East Main Street in Floyd. 

We’re in Suite #6 at the right front corner of the complex and open Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Fridays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays noon to 3 p.m.

We may modify the hours after the first of the year and close on Sundays from January through the end of March.

At the moment, we’re featuring our photography plus the work of photographer Don Johnson, writer-photographer Fred First and musical CDs of Bernie Coveney. Others will be added as we bring the studio up to speed.

If you’re in Floyd, drop by and see us.

Popular Floyd musician Bernie Coveney’s new CD is now out and worth a listen. We carry copies at Blue Ridge Muse at the Village Green. Drop by and pick one up. Learn more at Bernie’s web site.