I like horror movies as much as the next guy. O.K., I probably like them a lot more than the next guy and that is why movies like “The Grudge 2” tick me off. It shouldn’t exist, but it does and it laughs at you, while not giving you one iota of a reason for its existence while you are watching it. It has no compelling story to complete, no fun character to follow, nothing left in its arsenal after the first one and yet here it is.

You never know when you accept an invitation to tell people about your hometown just what kind of questions they’ll lob your way.

No sooner had the ink dried on the column about my friend, Stevie, who rescues possums than I found myself joining her posse of possum preservers.

We were taking in lunch with family at the Bulloch House in Warm Springs recently. Out in their well-appointed yard, there was a busy bubble machine, spinning out hundreds of bubbles to the delight of customers. Someone in our group said she felt like she was on the Lawrence Welk Show (he was known for his champagne music with accompanying bubbles).

Dateline: Peachtree City — This morning, Tuesday, Oct. 24, armed gunmen robbed a bank in Peachtree City, Ga., during the noon hour. The men were armed with a shotgun and, possibly, a rifle. In the days ahead, all will become clear. There are certain facts, however, that are not in dispute.

When I first got into genealogy, it took me a while before I was able to get excited over land records but when it hit me — boy! I learned very quickly that you can really get a lot of information from them.

There is a fine movie playing in local theaters, “Flags of Our Fathers,” based on the book of the same name written by James Bradley about the flag-raising on Iwo Jima in WWII. I wish all of you who can stand the realistic gruesome scenes of battle would see this movie about how a war has to be packaged and marketed to the American public. There is a priceless underlying message about heroes.

It hit the papers last week that a school in Massachusetts banned the game tag from recess.

As I read the story, I thought, why couldn’t this have happened somewhere like Delaware. It embarrasses me that this happened in my native state. I couldn’t believe what I was reading at first and then, upon further review, I could definitely believe it. This is just the latest in a war on childhood, a war that featured a salvo against dodgeball several years ago.

My friends, I will admit, are vain. That’s because chicks of a feather flock together.

Since you tend to group with similar personalities, I run with a pretty high maintenance bunch.

Seasonal change reinforces my belief in God. I dearly love the fall of the year. From the end of April to the crisp mornings of fall, it seems I wait. There is a season for all of us. The bomber is to believe life without seasons.

Now and then I catch myself writing such long, winding sentences that by the time I’ve stopped it with a period, I have to look at the beginning to see if both ends are relevant to each other. If not, I start hacking into them mercilessly. Few are the paragraphs that would not benefit from a thorough pruning. My best guide is how it sounds when read aloud.

When a leader falls, fails, or defects, it nearly always has a devastating effect on those who have served with them or under them.

Some things are predictable in this world. Each year you will have a birthday, unless you’re over 30. But, at the end of this month, a special event which only happens once every year will occur.

I had such great plans for this Byram family. Since many of them stayed in Coweta County and I have access to all kinds of records just a few miles from my home, I was going to get the final disposition of all who stayed here and their children — wills, estates, etc. — but, alas, my plans were thwarted. I drove to the courthouse last week and discovered that it is being remodeled. The clerks in the probate office have been moved to a teeny room in another area and the vault where the records are kept is off limits. I was told this may go on until after the first of the year, so if you are planning to do probate research in Newnan, hold off for a while.

Isaac says he doesn’t remember anything at all about his mother. He was only 4 when she died. His older sisters, Abigail and Esther, were well aware of the worry surrounding their mom’s illness.

Five years ago 19 Islamist Jihadists murdered nearly 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania. In carrying out their “martyrdom missions,” the Jihadists joyously embraced death, confident that, obedient to Allah, paradise awaited them.

Just when you may have thought that you had heard everything possible, you haven’t heard about my blue-blooded-raised-in-society friend who rescues possums.

You don’t want to read it, so just throw the paper down. Trash it. Try never to remember the concept again: Clergy Appreciation Month. That’s the month of October. After all, “they” only work about two days a week. When they preach, they use Rick Warren’s, Andy Stanley’s, or Joel Osteen’s messages. They rarely pop in the hospital when someone in your family is critically ill. So, why? Why set aside a whole month to recognize the holy estate of ministry?

It’s been less than two weeks since Charles Roberts invaded a one-room Amish school house and shot 10 innocent little girls. The senseless brutality and violence has shocked and disgusted an entire nation.

Halloween is a special time for girls and boys everywhere. It’s a time for dressing up in your favorite costume to troll the neighbor in search of the one house that will have the best candy selection of all.

Once again we can thank Jackie Lambert of Palmetto for bringing us out of the darkness and shedding some light on this Robinson situation. This family happens to be her line.

Just when I thought that Mama’s star had peaked and was beginning to fall, Reader’s Digest called.

“Is your mother really like what you write or do you embellish it?” asked a Hollywood screenwriter.

Clean Congress! Clean the Executive Branch. Clean the Judicial Branch. When adequate light is focused on each branch, I am sure no branch will be found clean. Young people who serve powerful men and women have always been subject to personal whims of the same powerful.

A Grandma’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. It had been too long, since July, since I had seen the grandbabies.

Found a couple of weeks without too many obligations in them, cleared out what were there, then got online to see which airline had the best sale.

I thought when my last of three sons left home for the U. S. Air Force several years ago that my involvement with schools, candy sales, and athletics was over. I would now be an “empty nester” with free time galore on my hands to read, or to fish, or just to putter about.

Retirement — even the word sounds relaxing. Most folks have definite ideas of what they’ll do when they reach those golden years. Some will retire just so they can open their own businesses, working harder and longer hours than before they retired – nope, not me.

I’m still trying to juggle these Byram kids around and figure out when they were born so I can get them in some semblance of birth order. It’s very difficult when you’re working that far back in time (James and Hannah were married in 1808) and there are no census records to give you specific ages. All you get before 1850 is a “range” of years when the children might have been born.

Reasoning by historical analogy is dangerous. Georges Santayana notwithstanding, history does not repeat itself. Rather, the value of history is in what we learn from the past. Failures are as instructive as successes, if not more so.

Lately, I’ve found myself in mourning over the escalating loss of something that clearly distinguished the South from the rest of America’s regions for over 200 years.

Samuel, born a bit premature in 2003, recently turned 3. Along the way to that illustrious age he caught on to nearly every ability appropriate to his age. He crawled, although in a lopsided way, pulled himself up, took his first steps, learned his first words - mostly in what child development experts consider “normal” progression.