Articles by Birney Imes
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
Partial to Home: Waiting for a train
Sunday morning, a week ago, en route to my bother’s house on South Ninth Street, I met what appeared to be one of those endless freight trains.
Partial to Home: A deadly silence
Were he Catholic, chances are Jimmy Carter, who turns 96 later this week, would be destined for sainthood. Since his 1980 defeat by Ronald Reagan in his bid for a second term as president, Carter, with his wife Rosalyn, has devoted himself to humanitarian causes.
Partial to Home: Under a watermelon sky
About a week ago, in the waning days of August, Gerry Jeffcoat gave me a watermelon he’d grown. A Congo Red, he said when asked the variety.
Partial to Home: And the conversation turns to newspapers
Before coming to The Dispatch in the mid-90s, I worked as a commercial photographer. In those days there was a lot of manufacturing in the area, and there was product photography to be done: fishing lures, toilet seats, gym sets, hams.
Partial to Home: A perfect day
On the morning of my birthday this past week, I took my coffee outside and found my usual seat in a garden overlooking the street.
Partial to Home: An authentic experience
The other day while walking along the entranceway to our fair city carrying two trash bags filled with litter, I happened upon an empty Dr. Pepper can.
Partial to Home: Alan Smith’s quiet good works
When Alan Smith passed from this world Sunday evening, he was in his home surrounded by an adoring family, who had been remembering him with stories. There was little doubt how the evening would play out. A long bout with cancer would soon be over.
Partial to Home: Of masks and monuments
Last week a friend sent me a cartoon of two beekeepers in their bee suits standing next to a disturbed hive of bees, some of which are angrily swarming around the head of their unmasked companion.
Partial to Home: Honeybees offer virus preview
With a bit of imagination you could say that last fall our bees gave us a preview of the pandemic now besetting us. Suddenly they started dying in large numbers. I would walk out mornings to find piles of dead honeybees on the ground around the hives. Not only was it confounding, it was heart-wrenching. These thousands of small flying creatures were our pets.
Partial to Home: Life lessons from the bee yard
On a recent Saturday morning as I walked into the Starkville Community Market, a young boy, his blue baseball cap askew over curly brown hair, asked if I’d like to buy a beeswax candle.
Partial to Home: The cherry cure
When someone mentions gout, you think of Ben Franklin and Samuel Johnston, the 1700s. Do people still even get gout?
After weeks on the run, lawyer with Columbus ties arrested
July 14, 2025
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