Opinion

 You probably watched Barack Obama win the presidential election last Tuesday night with thoughts of tearful admiration, disgusting disdain or just simple, palpable amazement.

I was thinking of a guy named Delbert O’Bannon.

For some of us, he was a long-ago agent of change who in a small and anonymous  way helped evolve a world in which Obama could be elected.

I am delighted that Steve Doyle has returned to Shelby County to take the reins of our hometown paper.  It's always good for a community when one of its own assumes a prominent position from which to influence its future.  When you grow up in a place that you love, you want it to always remain just as good as you remembered, and if you have the inclination and the position you'll do what it takes to assure it.

I don't normally fret about writing columns, but this one has been tough. How, after all, do you adequately muster the words to pay fitting tribute to someone who has spent much of her life taking care of our most vulnerable children and their families?

For more than a decade, Mary Simmons directed the Dorman Center, a special day care for at-risk children. If you had to make a list of some of life's toughest assignments, that job would be right near the top.

The woman’s phone message was clear and strong and, as is the case with many of its ilk, absent of name, number or even e-mail address:

“Your paper put an endorsement of Barack Obama on the front page. You should have put an endorsement of John McCain on the front page.”

She didn’t elaborate. Her point and reasoning were understandable, and there was no problem with her vitriol.

But her perceptions were more than a little hazy.

I've followed the All-America Selections for as long as I can remember. It was always a designation that my father trusted, and we often trialed the plants in our own family garden the year before their introduction.

Some of the more memorable plants include "Purple Wave" petunia, "Magestic Giants" pansy mix, and the "Profusion" zinnias.

Sure, there were memorable vegetables in the past, but it seems as though the AAS is responding to the increase in vegetable gardening interest by including more vegetables then ever each year.

Sometime during the last couple of decades, the exact moment seems to have gone unrecorded, a witch toiling over a boiling caldron somehow threw in the right mix of eye of newt, cats whiskers and the dander of Cousin It to conjure up a spell that suddenly made Halloween very important.

What always had seemed to be a fun little candyfest that captured the attention of small children, their parents and their dentists for, oh, maybe two weeks now has become some sort of monthslong homage to all things scary and saccharine.

Recently my close friend from New York City discovered he had a serious medical problem and needed extensive surgery. The hospital had two specialists on staff who would be able to perform said surgery. One of the surgeons had about 8 years of medical surgical experience and the other about 35 years of experience and knowledge. My friend, realizing the seriousness of the medical problem and the threat to his life and his future, took his time to evaluate both doctors.

Our current weather conditions demand that we rethink some of our fall chores.

Fall lawn and tree fertilization should come later this year then normal because of the drought conditions. An application of high nitrogen now would only burn up what little green grass you may have and force trees to work more then they should under stressful conditions.

Even if you irrigate the lawn and water is not an issue, you still want to hold off because our lawns also share space with the roots of our trees and shrubs and will have access to the applied nitrogen.

As a person with a vested interest, I have but three words to the Simpsonville City Council about its consideration of building a downtown along the U.S. 60 corridor: Please be careful.

Though I grew up about a mile outside its borders, for the first two decades of my life I went to it or through Simpsonville for just about everything. I called Simpsonville home, even if my address was Rural Route 2, Shelbyville.

Always affectionately known as Simp, this was place of, you might say, simplicity: quaint, quiet and quintessentially personal.