Commentaries & Essays

Mother's Day provides a chance to think about our mothers and about those who came before them -- the often unsung heroes of countless families. Charlottesville writer Debby Prum remembers her grandmother -- who lived for more than a century and left her family with many amusing memories. 

My son gave me a record player for Christmas.  Here is how it works. You turn a knob to switch on the power. You place the vinyl LP onto the turntable. You lift the black lever and guide the needle to the record. The needle drops and then—miracle of miracles--you hear music.

On the other hand, turning on my television requires an advanced degree in electronic devices. How I long for the big brown wooden box of my childhood, the one with an on/off knob and a rotary dial to select the four available channels.

On a mild night in January, I went to the opening evening of the Martin Luther King celebration in Lexington. It’s  a simple service, held annually at the First Baptist Church at the foot of Main Street.

“Expectations lead to tension, “ said Susan McCulley, my dance instructor.  Then she told us to look at ourselves in the mirrored wall.  She asked, “Does what you see meet your expectations?”

Nope.  Not so much.

I was expecting to appear a little taller.  I stood near the front of the room and looked at the reflections of my classmates.  Clearly, they all towered over me.

The U.S. military relies heavily on the skills of its fighter pilots -- an elite group of men and women with a challenging skill set.  Nelson County writer Linda Crowe made that discovery while watching a YouTube video of her nephew at Marine Corps Flight School. Rapid climbing and descents can cause pilots to lose their vision or black out, but they can train in a kind of centrifuge to avoid those fearful events. Crowe was amazed and impressed by a plucky instructor in the video and sent fan mail to the guy she calls Centrifuge Man.