A plant virus called cassava brown streak disease has spread across much of the African interior, reducing by as much as 50 million tons a year the harvest of a crop upon which some 500 million Africans rely for their staple food.
Mushrooms are elusive in this year of late snows and cold temperatures, but there are pests aplenty.
Cyrus, the last of my Brittany bird dog line — grandson of Rufus and son of Holly’s Bear — has joined them in that place of memory, where the mornings are forever frosty and the meadows are rich with quail.
Spring has come haltingly and late this year to the Ozark forest. The fish and the turkeys are accounted for. The next issue is the mushrooms.
The diseases of sub-Saharan Africa cripple, disfigure and diminish productivity. A child born there today, if he or she manages to survive to age 5, has a shorter life expectancy than an infant born in any other region of the world — just 54 years by the latest reckoning.
One cannot help wondering how much of the nastiness in the world might be moderated, or even prevented altogether, by reminding the strutting miscreants in a timely way that the world is watching.
Some big time college basketball coaches — men receiving salaries in the millions of dollars — have been investigated, censured and in some cases fired or forced to resign for verbally or even physically abusing their players.
Instead of basking in the sun, I’m rejoicing in the disappearance of the latest outrageous springtime snow — even while keeping my eye on an approaching cold front. But there are hopeful signs of finer days to come.
Air travel need not be a cattle call. Even under trying circumstances an airline can make the journey bearable.
Just off the west coast of Florida, reached by a causeway from Fort Myers, there’s a small island to which, more times than I can readily count, we’ve fled to escape the end-of-winter nastiness.
Disintegrating with almost the force of a nuclear blast, the cosmic intruder had scattered pieces of itself across a wide reach of the snowy landscape. So the treasure hunt began.
The first temptation was to dismiss the great snowfall of this past week as a trial, a nuisance — unwelcome and undeserved. But then, after the necessary complaining, one could not help noticing the almost magical beauty that came with the inconvenience.
Lucy I can handle. But if a savage little varmint really does have a place in my family tree, I may have to reconsider two folks in a lush garden with an apple tree and a conniving snake.
The naked ladies have shown up again outside my window. But don’t bother driving down my block on the chance of witnessing an X-rated spectacle.
Those are the times of year most freighted with rich memories: the excitement of heading away to school, my first weeks as a beginner in the craft at which I’ve spent all my working years, the ceremony in which a dear girl and I pledged to find our way together.
It is believed by some that Kim Jong Un is taking a militant stance to impress the populace and solidify his position as “supreme leader.” But the many North Koreans who cling to life on the very brink of starvation would be more impressed if he could help them get something to eat.
Clay Chastain has had a two-decade-long career as a relentless public nuisance, determined to find a role in community affairs. What began as gratuitous meddling had become first annoying, then tiresomely repetitive and finally almost comical.
A magnificent History Channel documentary titled “World War II From Space” presented the unfolding story of the greatest, most costly, most significant conflict in my lifetime. In riveting detail, it presented the whole narrative of World War II.
Tip, the older, is a gray tabby, named for the white last inch of her tail. The other, called Laika after the Russian space dog, arrived four years later, hardly past kittenhood. Never, during their years in the same house, has either one of them seen the other. But that may change.
Freedom of speech does not permit false, malicious and damaging assertions by any person or institution against a blameless individual. And the right of gun ownership does not preclude the right of Congress to enact regulations deemed in the interest of the public’s safety.
I don’t object to the sport of hunting, as long as it is pursued in a safe and principled way. But to intrude without permission on land with no knowledge of where others might be stationed is both illegal and extremely dangerous.
To describe Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s pudgy boy dictator, as a buffoon isn’t to say that he’s not dangerous. But, as a practical matter, those at greatest peril are the luckless 24.5 million people whose misfortune it is to suffer and starve under his rule.
I have sometimes heard my column described by readers as “a vacation from the news.” I’ve taken that as a compliment. But what happened in Connecticut two days ago is news from which no vacation is possible or permissible.
In the aftermath of a New Yorker's fatal plunge onto subway tracks, people expressed wonderment and dismay that among the considerable crowd in the station, not one had attempted a rescue. But I have to say I understand perfectly. In desperate moments, the ability to act is both priceless and rare.
I am writing this on a typewriter, one of the 23 archaic machines that clutter an upper-floor room in our house. I scarcely can express what pure joy it is to return — if only temporarily — to the instrument upon which I depended for the first 30 years of my working life.
