SourceNine-year-old Vertran Stepforth observed his grandfather, 66-year-old Thomas Stepforth Sr., carefully reading the Big Loft Bulletin and the Lofton County Free Voice side by side, with a smile.“What's happening, Pop-Pop?” Vertran said. “Usually you don't even like the Big Loft Bulletin!

There was no way I was going to attempt to write out "Becoming the Invisible Flower Child" in German even though the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past last week was kind enough -- before laughing himself almost out of gravity for thirty entire minutes at what he knew would be my reaction -- to create that word for us!

Source“I don't normally talk with you, Uncle Captain, because we just don't run into each other like that, but how do you do that?”Capt. R.E. Ludlow looked up from having had a conversation with his baby grandson five-year-old R.E. Ludlow III, also known as Lil' Robert, to try to understand what eleven-year-old Velma Trent was asking.

SourceHe took his inspiration from the field marshal in Modest Mussorgsky's Songs and Dances of Death. Many community members had died fighting the company that had poisoned the town's soil. Now, their heir, grown as a lawyer, would legally stamp the poisoners into their own ground, never to rise again!

SourceCapt. Ironwood Hamilton of the Tinyville, VA police department was pretty good at finding a way inside the rules, creatively interpreted, to do all good that needed to be done. Have domestic terrorists that outnumber your three-man police force 40-to-1? No problem! Empower and train and deputize the very community they are trying to terrorize to take all of them out. Have a protest coming through that outnumbers your police force 400-to-1? No problem! You know what roads they have to take. Close them and make them go through the muddy fields on either side because it rained for a week. Have a suspect who is a bartender who is likely to spray up the whole bar fighting you, but also has his shelves precariously pinned to one stout pin? No problem! Shoot out the pin and let gravity take care of the rest.

SourceWhat I see: A young woman sitting on concrete stairs with her backpack ... the windows suggest an old church, although it could be a very old schoolWhat I feel: Deep heartbreak ... and I know "church hurt" can be the worst