Articles by Birney Imes
Birney Imes: Inside the mind of the U.S. Air Force
Each year the U.S. Air Force gathers its best and brightest mid-level officers and sends them to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, AL., for what is called War College. There for 10 months these future military leaders, most of whom are seasoned warriors, turn their attention from suicide bombers, laser-guided missiles and helicopter rescues to matters of policy.
Birney Imes: ‘Love is a cattlefield’
I felt like a stray dog sniffing empty streets on a walk through Southside early this morning. A flattened turtle just down the street from (supervisor) Jeff Smith’s mother’s house I did not sniff. Nor did I the remains of a chicken dinner in styrofoam the ants were polishing off on Eighth, just this side of the tracks.
Birney Imes: Jouney to the end of the world
There is nothing quite like the feel on your skin of a spring morning in New Orleans. The air is soft, enveloping, almost aqueous. It caresses. Aromas from the night before waft down pitted streets and between crumbling buildings.
Birney Imes: Bees and coffee
A few weeks back during a two-person staff meeting that included a trip to Kudoz, a local coffee house, I found an answer to the foremost of my beekeeping woes.
Birney Imes: Elvis is alive and well (and living in the Masonic Subdivision)
The other day I got a call from Sandra Boone complaining about the delivery of her mother’s paper. “She loves her paper, been reading it for years,” Boone told me. She went on to say that her mother is an amputee and her previous carrier had put the paper under a weight on her wheelchair railing on the back porch. Sandra added that her mother was a retired beautician.
‘A calm chaos:’ Columbus native living in Tokyo recounts moments after disaster
Sometime between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. Saturday before last, Mary Simmons sent her brother in Atlanta a text message from her Tokyo apartment: It said, “Big earthquake in Japan. Epicenter not Tokyo. I’m safe and warm.”
Birney Imes: Remembering Ralph
If you frequented the McDonald’s on Highway 45 as I did with our kids in the mid-80s, chances are you would have seen there a tall, stooped man with a spectacularly wrinkled shirt and a twisted necktie drinking coffee.
Birney Imes: Mr. Feeney makes a move
Larry Feeney is downsizing. The semi-retired MUW art professor, like an increasing number of widowed and single people in their 60s and 70s, is shedding the accumulated detritus of a lifetime and moving into a smaller, more manageable place.
Birney Imes: Snow day
It began Wednesday evening, snowflakes coming down like in a Christmas movie. By the time I headed for home at 7, the streets were empty and white.
Birney Imes: Waiting for spring
Friday, at the end of an afternoon of weeding and rearranging flower beds, Linda Spearling went inside her house and warmed her hands over a wood stove.
Birney Imes: Catfish Alley, the magazine
Today’s front page carries news of the birthing of our new magazine, Catfish Alley. Actually,”gestation” is a better word since the actually birthing will come
Birney Imes: A jewel of a school
The first thing you notice walking in is the blue under the portico. It’s a Southern thing. You paint the ceilings of your porch blue to keep the wasps and dirt daubers away.
Birney Imes: Leave Huck Finn alone
“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain
called ‘Huckleberry Finn.’ There was nothing before. And there has
been nothing as good since.”
Ernest Hemingway in 1935
Mark Twain, dead for a 100 years, is still causing a ruckus. No doubt
he would have something quotable to say about this latest business.
Birney Imes: Meaningful conversation
If you’re not one to submit to the discipline of a New Year’s resolution, but you would like to make improvements, December’s “Psychology Today” may have your answer: Talk more. Not just any talk, thoughtful conversation.
Birney Imes: Snow on a Christmas morn
As I write this on Christmas morning, the snow is quickly disappearing. In the next room someone is playing the soundtrack from “Love Actually,” the movie that for us has become a family Christmas tradition.
