May 22, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com We live in an age of power tools, big-box home improvement centers and a throwaway culture, so when a leaning fence gate needs fixing, the modus operandi may well be to (1) buy a super-duper, lithium-powered hammer drill from the big box store […]
Author: thecolumnrule
PLUMS IN SEASON
May 15, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Once upon a time – this seems a fairy tale of sorts – a 14-year-old youngster with a huge quarter in his pocket – more money than he touched in an average year – found himself in a sudden heavy June downpour on a village […]
EDUCATOR
May 8, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com In the Spring Valley, N.Y., breakfast program, those volunteers retired come from every former vocation – professional, blue-collar, high-finance, the trades, at home, etc. And we bring our workplace habits with us. For example, the late Bob Drennen, once longtime principal […]
‘DEAFNESS AT THE HIGH COURT’
Art Gunther image/May 5, 2022
OF NECESSITY
May 1, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Years ago, decades actually, this once young man watched as an older fellow carefully straightened bent nails taken from discarded wood. “Why,” I asked? The man said he would reuse them, but I wondered why he bothered, since an ample-sized box […]
PULL-CHAIN LIGHTS
By Arthur H. Gunther IIIthecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Many of the older homes I walked into as a youngster had one- or two-bulb ceiling fixtures in the middle of the room, operated by a long pull chain that hit any tall fellow in the head. These lights, the fashion of the time when electricity first came […]
GOODNESS OVER ALL
April,17, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com In this especially crazy world right now – “fakakta,” as the Yiddish word well describes, with media focused on the horrors of the war in Ukraine, the killing of children, the raping; in a moment when high inflation is threatening virus recovery; in an […]
THE ‘RIGHT-TIME’ D.A.
April 10, 2022 By Arthur H.Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com Take a “country” boy who earns a law degree and throw him into an emerging suburb with the first wisps of urban-like crime, and you have someone who calls himself the “Hayseed D.A.” Only the fellow proves no country bumpkin. Or maybe he was […]
LIBRARIES
By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com This is National Library Week, an annually booked observance that is seemingly unnecessary for readers since every week, even every day, celebrates the great adventure of not only running eyes over words but going to the places where they rest on shelves for the next visit […]
GIFTS, ALL
March 27, 2022 By Arthur H. Gunther III thecolumnrule.com ahgunther@yahoo.com The Irish carry words in their pockets as others do coins. Even the spare change can become a short story or novel. This essay is written after the Feast of St. Patrick and all the religious/cultural moments, parades and green things […]