Articles by Birney Imes

Partial to Home: The peripatetic paddler
Look up the word “peripatetic” in a thesaurus and take your pick: nomadic, traveling, wandering, roving, roaming. You can’t describe Neal Moore without using one of them.

Partial to Home: Life continues
If you happened to be walking down Eighth Street North after the rains on Thursday, chances are around the 800 block on the right side of the street you would have noticed the dogwood draped in wisteria, both in full bloom.

Partial to Home: A lovin’ spoonful
My Grandma Eunice took her coffee from a cup and saucer, often mismatched. She would “spill” the coffee from the cup into the saucer and after it cooled, drink from the saucer.

Partial to Home: Nancy M. Imes, 1928-2021
Nancy McClanahan Imes, a lifelong resident of Columbus known for her over-sized personality, support of charitable causes, marriage to businessman and Dispatch publisher Birney Imes Jr. and, in her later years, the realization of a sumptuous French country-style home in the Prairie, died Thursday afternoon. She was 92.

Partial to Home: A woman’s best friend
About this time last year, Jannette Adams had a crippling case of the COVID blues. She felt lonely and adrift.

Partial to Home: Remembering the Beatles
The other day I was reminiscing with Newell Robinson, a friend from childhood. We hadn’t talked in decades. Newell, whose father, Dr. Jo Robinson, was a pediatrician here for many years, is a heart surgeon practicing in New York.

Partial to Home: From bleak to beautiful
This past week, a friend, who is a lover of trees, butterflies, hummingbirds and all things in the natural world, asked if I knew anything about the live oaks lining Airline Road near the Humane Society.

Partial to Home: Chowing down in the Black Hills
One day last week while organizing my mother’s desk my sister came across a box of letters. Calling them letters might be a stretch. These were postcards and notes written to our father by his children from summer camp and during trips with friends.

Partial to Home: Reconnecting with old friends
On long ago summer evenings when the kids were small, I would take them and their friends to the front campus of The W to play freeze tag.

Partial to Home: A case for kindness
What can I do? It’s a question a lot of people have been asking these past few days. How to deal with this ongoing feeling of helplessness, at home and in Washington.

Partial to Home: More conversations, better understanding
This first morning of the new year begins in a corner of the backyard in a weathered wooden chair of cypress made by a long-gone friend. The coffee is good and the air washed fresh by last night’s rain.

Partial to Home: Predawn preparations
At 5:30 a.m. the only light in the backyard is the soft, red glow of the greenhouse.

Partial to Home: Small-town boys
One of the pleasures of living near downtown is the variety of options the walker has just outside his or her front door, i.e. The Riverwalk and/or soccer park, MUW campus, Friendship Cemetery.

Partial to Home: Winter light
It seemed strangely incongruous to sit in the predawn light at my laptop in PJs and Paul Thorn autographed baseball cap singing hosannas to Mother Nature.

Partial to Home: Taking good care
For his service to his country in Vietnam, he was spit upon and called a “baby killer.” For his devotion to his Southern wife, he was reviled by his mother-in-law as a “damn Yankee.”

Partial to Home: Idle remark opens floodgates of memory
Not too long ago, someone said to me, “You always were a little off-center.” Later that day I was going to be driving a tractor and was dressed for the part in patched work pants and a rumpled cotton shirt. Though attire is what evoked the comment and his tone friendly, I suspect the fellow’s assessment wasn’t limited to my sartorial choices.

Partial to Home: Trash retrieval outing offers unexpected delights
What’s the difference between a graveyard and a cemetery? A friend asked me this question Friday, and I, a lifelong habitue of burial places, large and small, had no idea.

Partial to Home: Unexpected splendor along Officers Lake Road
How do you write 600 words about a bend in the road? What if that road, in the shape of a backwards “S,” snakes around a slough made gorgeous with a profusion of yellow wildflowers?

Partial to Home: Persimmons and possums
“Opossums in particular enjoy persimmon fruit and may be seen foraging in your tree at night. While opossums do not typically cause damage to structures