Ask Rufus: Pilgrimage will feature nine homes from original tour

A week from tomorrow will be the opening of the annual Columbus spring pilgrimage. Although the first pilgrimage was in the spring of 1940, a Columbus tour of homes actually started a year earlier.

Shannon Bardwell: Charlie Purple Turnipseed

I ran my hand over the book cover which I'm in the habit of doing. A pretty cover attracts me. The book featured delicate anthropomorphic characters framing a drawing of a kindly man wearing an oversized purple shirt, a garden hat; he was leaning on a long stick and holding a sunflower. Bumblebees bumbled all around him. I'm afraid I might be one of those people who judge a book by its cover.

Slimantics: The mayor's race is, yawn, on ...

About 50 people crowded into the Grill Room at Lion Hills Golf Club Thursday for the latest episode of the Columbus Exchange Club Candidates Forum, which those in attendance will recall as "The 57 minutes of my life I really, really wish I had back."

Slimantics: Mercifully, the end is near ...

The Great Festering Pile of Stupid, sometimes referred to as the Mississippi Legislature, will soon end its 2013 session.

Slimantics: Dad and the contradiction of spring ...

Wednesday is the first day of spring, that time of year when most of us do with joy what we will be complaining about having to do come summer.

Possumhaw: The best things in libraries are free

People always say that you can't get something for nothing but that's not true. Not at the library.

Birney Imes: When ink gets in your blood

A word of advice: When the revolution comes, make sure Tina Perry is on your side. In the meantime, I'm glad she's on ours. This past week Tina hardly had time to note the passing of her 30th anniversary at The Dispatch. There was, after all, a paper to get out.

Ask Rufus: Work chants and cotton slides

Seeing the Tombigbee River filled with March rains brings to mind days long past when high water meant it was time to ship cotton to Mobile by steamboat.

Adele Elliott: And they're off ...

We hear a lot of people say, "I don't pay attention to politics." And, to that, I answer, "Then you get what you deserve." I am not a political reporter. I am not even a real reporter. I am just an opinion columnist who is lucky enough to have a forum for my rants and observations.

Slimantics: The obituary as an art form

The art of writing involves showing rather than telling. The novice will write about a person being tall or beautiful or angry. The great writer will create a image of those qualities in the reader's mind. Readers don't want to be told; they want to see.

Possumhaw: That old-time religion

The little church in the Prairie, Shaeffer's Chapel, had their annual Seniors Appreciation Banquet -- not seniors like high-schoolers, but seniors like seniors. The preacher shared with the crowd, "Honor your father and mother so that your days on the earth may be long."

California nursing home incident brings to fore end-of-life issues

My last job before returning to Mississippi was a gig as a graveyard-shift janitor at a 55-plus living facility in Mesa, Ariz., called Venture Out. It was the sort of job you would expect a convicted felon who had gone from one minimum-wage job to another since being released from prison would have.

Ask Rufus: I Call Them Killdees

One day last week in a conversation with my friends Bert and Sharon Falkner, killdeers, a delightful spring and summer bird of area fields, came up. It is a bird that I have enjoyed watching since I was a child. You will remember them as the bird that acts like it has a broken wing to draw potential predators away from its nest.

Best of the Triangle 2012

Home & Garden
Guide 2013

Dining Guide 2013