Articles > Columns > Musings

Living A Dog's Life

By Ron Marr BORIS, MY BLIND AND MASSIVE MALAMUTE, has just come awake with a silly grin on his face. He’s a happy fellow this late night, having just become the proud recipient of a gigantic “dog pillow,” the canine equivalent of a feather bed. He stands, turns three times (as dogs are prone to do), and plops his 115 pounds into a more comfortable position. Within seconds, he drifts back toward peaceful slumber.

Such…... Read more >

Groundhog Blues

By Ron W. Marr

My neighbor shot a marauding groundhog the other day, thus consigning the entirety of America to another 365 days of winter. I’m not saying that this particular rodent didn’t deserve his fate, for last summer he’d played fast and loose with our gardens. By early fall he’d excavated more holes in our yards than a gravedigger. Still, to end his existence just prior to February 2nd, Groundhog Day, seemed a temptation of fate r…... Read more >

The Measure of a Man

By Ron Marr

Almost twelve years ago to the day, I sat in a tattered chair, took a deep breath of crystal air, and gazed in awe at the moonlit outline of Ward’s Peak. I was living in a rented, tar-paper shack with an Irish Wolfhound puppy named Buffett, preparing to start a weekly newspaper with virtually no funds, and happy as a clam. I had never before lived in a place where the mountains hung right outside my window, never before neighb…... Read more >

The Great Maybe

By Ron Marr

The expectations are a bit cloudy, the Magic 8 Ball offering its vague advice of “ask again later.” This is the spring that followed the winter that wasn’t, a season that left the entire populace of my little Gasconade River hideaway a tad confused.

In January, when the mercury over-achieved its normal condition by forty degrees, I arose to a morning symphony of tittering songbirds. During February, a period usually reserve…... Read more >