LightGrams (Page 20)

Undelivered Messages

LightGrams February 1, 2017 Volume 22, Number 5 Residents of Vicenza, Italy can expect to receive more mail in the next few weeks. Some of the mail they’ll receive dates back to 2010. It’s not that the Italian postal service has fallen behind, but one of their mail carriers has been slacking. A 56-year-old postman…

Greased Poles

LightGrams January 25, 2017 Volume 22, Number 4 Entertainment was harder to find in “the old days”. I remember being at the city park for a July 4th celebration when I was young. One of the highlights of the day was watching men trying to climb a telephone pole to retrieve a $10 bill on…

What Are Our Limits?

LightGrams January 18, 2017 Volume 22, Number 3 The region in which I live, like many others around the U.S., has been experiencing unusual cold in recent days. This morning the temperature was 5 degrees above zero. Most of the schools are closed because of icy roads in some of the mountainous areas. You can…

Identifying Marks

LightGrams January 11, 2017 Volume 22, Number 2 The 74-year-old man who was arrested in Thailand on Wednesday had been on the run for ten years. Accused of murdering a man in Japan, he had fled to a province just north of Bangkok, and had kept a low profile ever since. Someone saw him playing…

An Unpayable Bill

LightGrams January 4, 2017 Volume 22, Number 1 Let me warn you: This is an Erie story. Before sticklers for precise spelling begin screaming let me assure you that I know how to spell the word that means “strange” or “weird”: that would be eerie, and it’s not capitalized. The story to which I’m about…

Roughing It?

LightGrams December 21, 2017 Volume 21, Number 43 It’s a punch-line I’ve heard numerous times. When the conversation turns to outdoor camping, someone is bound to say, “I do all of my camping at Holiday Inn.” The point is easy to discern: they don’t like the thought of sleeping on the ground, fighting insects and…

Letters From The Past

LightGrams December 14, 2017 Volume 21, Number 42 The Christmas season was a magical time for me. Growing up as a son of a coal miner in southeastern Kentucky, we had enough but we didn’t have a lot extra. For a few years I wrote letters to Santa Claus, and then listened daily to the…

Beware Where You Break The Law!

LightGrams December 7, 2017 Volume 21, Number 41 The woman in Long Island, New York is not named in the Associated Press report from December 6, 2017. This 26-year-old was arriving for a court appearance in response to a summons she was given for possession of marijuana. For most of us, that would qualify as…

The Durable Binding

LightGrams November 30, 2017 Volume 21, Number 40 The idea of a time capsule is intriguing. Jim Croce released a song in 1972 that points to the seeming impossibility of putting “time in a bottle”. “It can’t be done” is how most people respond to such a thought. Time passes, and you can’t save it.…

Punch The Shark

LightGrams November 16, 2017 Volume 21, Number 39 You might say that Charlie Fry is a lucky fellow. He was surfing this past Monday in Australia when he was attacked by a shark. But more than luck was involved; he fought back. He aimed a punch on the nose of the shark, and that was…