“Your shoestring’s untied!” “Your shirt’s unbuttoned.” “There’s a fly in your soup.” You are likely to hear any of these on the first day of April as early risers seek to dupe those who fail to remember the Day of the Fool. Although practical jokes and pranks have been around…
Most of us are familiar with the story of Goldilocks. This precious little girl went for an unsupervised walk in the woods and happened upon the home of three absentee bears. After sampling their porridge on the table, she gobbled up the portion belonging to the baby bear because it…
Last weekend many Jews celebrated the Festival of Purim which remembers God’s miraculous deliverance of their people through the courage of young Queen Esther. In this Old Testament book, an evil man by the name of Haman hatched a plot to annihilate the Jews through a craftily worded executive order…
Thanks to an unusually early warm-up, crocuses and some daffodils are now in full bloom. The vibrant purples, yellows, and whites brighten up the landscape that is largely still dominated by browns and greys. These early harbingers assure us that spring is indeed on the way and that winter is…
We have had an unusually warm winter in the Shenandoah Valley this year for which we can be most grateful. Our monthly budgets are breathing a sigh of relief with an easing of heating bills as are VDOT’s snow removal allocations. Even with the warmer temperatures, however, there would still…