No book review today. Instead, some words about the importance of words — yours.

If you’re reading these words and live in Western North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee, or parts of Georgia and South Carolina, then you survived the Great Flood of 2024.  

The title of this column is a sentence written in my old road journals. Back on Dec. 26, 2007. I was 22 years old and leaving my hometown of Plattsburgh, New York, heading west to start my first reporting gig post-college at the Teton Valley News in Driggs, Idaho. 

My Christmas wish is that every artificial light on earth gets turned off for 24 hours between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. We can look up and see the enormity of the universe without light pollution. 

I’m trying my best to get this column out to you, but it’s not as easy as it seems. My teeth are chattering like dice in a coffee cup, and my fingers are as stiff as frozen French fries.

It’s 9:54 a.m. Tuesday. I’m sitting at the old wooden kitchen table at my parents’ farmhouse in rural Upstate New York, within close range of the Canadian border, just a few farm fields away from the mighty, ancient Lake Champlain. 

Sensing energy flow in your home is vital when designing a space. We like to think that arranging our rooms based on our style alone will suffice in creating a nurturing home, but how the energy moves without a stick of furniture in it can make or break our well-being. 

Dear family, we are so very pleased to have you with us this weekend to celebrate Jack’s graduation from high school. We welcome those who are staying on the residence as well as those who have gone to quite some expense to secure other lodging in the vicinity. We love you all! 

Written by Sabrina Matheny • Rumble Contributor | Remember last week when you sat down to your thanksgiving meal ready to feast on all the traditional dishes that brought about memories from your childhood? You sat around enjoying the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade as the kitchen filled with those wonderful scents that took you back in time to grandma’s house. Your tastebuds started working overtime in anticipation of consuming your best meal to date! You had not one but two servings of your favorite dishes, knowing good and well it would be another year before you would get to savor those flavors again. 

Come together, work together, play together, win together…

There’s a basic human longing for a sense of place, some part of the world that’s home, a place where you are a part of something that feeds your soul. Find it, feel it, and you’re one of the lucky ones.