Articles by Birney Imes
Partial to Home: Building the world we want to live in
On Wednesday a small group of friends met at Munson Brothers’ Trading Post to eat pizza.
Community activist and businessman Ryan Munson needed some folks to sample food he hopes to serve at his neighborhood gathering place.
Partial to Home: We pray for sweet dreams
On a Saturday morning in late June about 80 people gathered in the parking lot of Mount Vernon Church in New Hope to make beds.
Photo: ‘They’re always good’
Tanner Eatman, 8, stands with her grandfather, Jerry Rogers, Friday holding a watermelon just purchased from Cherokee Melons on Wolf Road. “Ever since I was a boy, I’ve been buying them here,” said Rogers. “They’re always good.”
Partial to Home: Drive-by tomatoes
On the morning of July Fourth the phone rang. It was Roger Larsen. He was riding around handing out tomatoes. In the background I could hear dogs barking and the voice of a child.
Partial to Home: On tour with Dr. Jimmy
The elevator door opened and two third-year med students, both looking to be in their early 20s, got in. A white male and an African-American female.
Partial to Home: Our gun society
At the risk of pre-empting this column, I encourage readers to read The Dispatch’s Thursday editorial: “Our View: Thoughts and prayers for the Second Amendment”
This past weekend, well before Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a friend sent a political cartoon from “The Economist,” a British weekly magazine.
Partial to Home: Turning chance into (good) luck
It was 1974 when I happened to be roaming the halls of the MUW Art Department and bumped into the woman who would become my wife.
Partial to Home: A day on the river
“Was that an alligator?”
It was Thursday morning. An hour earlier Laird Bagnall and I had dropped our kayaks in the Tenn-Tom a mile downstream at Vienna Landing, an isolated launch 10 miles due south of Aliceville.
Partial to Home: Transplanted
In 1961 when the U.S. cut diplomatic relations with Cuba, Archie Noy’s father phoned his son and told him to come home.
Partial to Home: The past is not even past: talking history with Rufus Ward
You grow up in a place thick with history, the descendant of two families with deep roots in that place.
You were raised by relatives who spent long hours around dinner tables and on front porches telling stories.
Partial to Home: A love for the open trail
In early 2019, Taylor Griggs told her mom she wanted to hike a segment of the Appalachian Trail. She was about to embark on a four-year commitment to serve as a missionary in Ecuador.
Partial to Home: Please, no more Bradford pears
On a recent afternoon, as I was crossing the parking lot at Trinity Healthcare on the way to visit an aunt, I smelled something putrid, like dead fish. I had just ducked under a row of Bradford pears in full bloom, the source of the foul odor.
Partial to Home: My life at The Dispatch
For the 50-plus years my father was editor and publisher of this newspaper, he occupied two offices. One was a glassed-in space furnished with an old, oversized desk, cracked leather chairs, signed photographs from an assortment of obscure luminaries and several bookshelves filled with musty books that hadn’t been opened in a generation.
Partial to Home: Responding to Putin: Unity now more than ever
Like the rest of the world, I’ve watched with dread and admiration as events unfolded this past week in Ukraine.
Partial to Home: Kids planting trees
It’s Saturday, a week ago in Sim Scott Park, and five kids are arguing about who gets the shovel next.
Birney Imes: For the love of vinyl
It can be the slightest thing. A kid has an experience, seemingly insignificant at the time, and it turns out to be the spark that ignites a lifelong passion.
Partial to Home: Christ Castanis, 1929 – 2022
Sitting in the funeral home chapel Saturday morning, the sadness of the moment was compounded when it occurred to me that with the passing of my friend Christ Castanis, quite likely so goes the history of what was a vibrant Greek community in Columbus.
Partial to Home: Passing the torch
Had to go out and buy some honey this past week. After living for years with jars of it stashed in every corner of the house, it felt a bit strange.
Birney Imes: Dancing the Knights away
During his 20-plus years as a school teacher Ezra Baker led a double life.
After weeks on the run, lawyer with Columbus ties arrested
July 14, 2025
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