If you can read this, then you are some of the lucky ones; still with electricity, and having free time from shoveling and plowing chores. Since we are now low on Pringles and instant coffee, this may be close to the end at our place, out in Dearbought.

January 24 – Well tomorrow is the big day. Our campaign team has worked hard to prepare for it. I’ll announce to the world what has been one of the worst-kept secrets in town: that I’ll be running for county commissioner in Frederick County. What the citizens don’t see, but the politicians do, is that it takes a village to raise a candidate.

His exact age I’ve never known, but I think he was 12 or 13 when we met: sitting on a Winchester Hall bench beside his mother, waiting for election results. His father was again roaring to victory that night. City Republicans had a hard time finding anyone to run against him. Ron Young was the longest serving Frederick mayor in modern history.

When the smoke clears, one thing remains clear; the use of marijuana remains illegal for those intent on lighting up for their personal enjoyment.

President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address that he “wants to make life better for the middle class.” Do we, the middle class, need to have our lives made better? Are we not capable of functioning on our own? Can we not work, buy food, make babies, and live in the suburbs by our own efforts? What should government have to do with any of that?

Science has suffered an undeserved black eye from university professors claiming to be scientists. The sun is shining the light of truth on heralded evidence accepted by many climatologists concluding that the earth is warming. The data has been exposed as not founded on hard and fast rules of scientific discovery.

How long would it last? Now that didn’t take long. Much of this nation was tuned into President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address. With the myriad of problems that this country is facing, many wanted to hear the solutions that would decrease the deficit, lower unemployment, health care reform, and the abuses on Wall Street.

On Monday February 1, 1960, four students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into the historic 1929 F. W. Woolworth Five-and-Dime building at 301 North Elm Street in Greensboro, N.C., and ordered lunch.

Bukit Lawang, Sumatra, Indonesia – The river that divides this tropical village can be jumped with a flying leap by a high school track star. Water rushes through the small valley frothing clear and pure. A swinging bridge connects the two sides with a warning that only a few people can cross at the same time.

Somewhere in the Constitution, I guess, the Founding Fathers equated companies and corporations with the rights of American citizens; I don’t know where. Still it must be there. Otherwise the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) overstepped its authority.

"I saw communism with my own eyes," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the Republican National Convention in 2004. "I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector. I was a little boy, I wasn't an action hero back then, and I remember how scared I was that the soldiers would pull my father or my uncle out of the car and I'd never see him again. My family and so many others lived in fear...."

“Hell froze over” Saturday at Winchester Hall, as the man known to his fans as “Frederick’s youngest good ol’ boy” was unanimously appointed to be its youngest county commissioner. Those knowing the man well were not at all surprised.

On January 13, I filed to run for commissioner for Frederick County, as a Democrat. Should I have told my wife and children? J Just kidding!