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Just saying that word is usually enough to trigger an onslaught of Teh Crazy. So I’ll wait while you get it out of your system. For the rest of us, here’s a video about kittens.

Every now and then, stars of stage and screen, the sporting world, and sometimes even politicos, get into trouble. As do average citizens.

The incident itself may be of major or minor importance. The significant element is what happens after someone gets into the public eye. That often tells us more than the incident itself about the people involved. All too often, people in trouble lash out, publicly, and more often, privately.

So how do you explain how you’ve written ten good essays in ten days or why you haven’t written a damn thing for over two weeks? Are you so glib that all you have to do is to sit at your keyboard and be amazed how a two-thousand word report on car batteries just flowed through your fingers and is a literate work of prose that hardly needs any revision? Or why you’ve dried up and can’t complete a sentence despite just returning from an exciting trip abroad and hanging out with all kinds of interesting people.

At 8:15 AM March 20, 2013, I snapped an iPhone photo of the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C., and posted it to my Google Plus profile along with a brief caption. Less than an hour later and 540 miles away, a woman I’ll call Mary Barth composed a tweet in her Decatur, Ga., home and sent it using an account called “IHeartOakhurst2”: “you’re really going to tell the u.s. senate that you were cyberstalking decatur residents? that’s very brave.”

I have an argument as to the reason behind all this bickering, backbiting, squabbling and infighting. The cause may surprise you. It’s the jet airplane. Back before the jet, members of Congress were in Washington most weekends. It was not unusual for the various members to meet one another socially, even across party lines. Being better acquainted with one another, they even sometimes became friends with members of the opposing party.

There’s a special kind of sadness to watch an old dog who has been with you many years begin to fade before your very eyes. Our senior Goldie, Hank (the Hunk), is showing his age which has brought memories of other special dogs who lived long and happy lives with me, but alas passed on far too soon for my liking.

It slips up on all of us, man and his pups alike. Most people today hope to live well into their seventies and eighties.

Warren Zevon’s “Play It All Night Long” comes to mind when reading The New Mind of the South, the recently published book by journalist Tracy Thompson. The New Mind of the South,an engaging and edifying work, illustrates that for all the changes the South has experienced in the last 50-60 years, old ways and long-held beliefs still die hard. Much of the book’s content could be discussed at the Dew Drop Inn, the shelter Zevon created for fellowship and lubrication.