Kurt Rheinheimer
This magazine has been blessed, since it earliest issues in the late 1980s, with a bounty of talented, dedicated and insightful columnists.
The most treasured magazines, to my read, become a sort of friend in your hands, and have one important thing in common in reaching that status: an array of every-issue writers and topics that touch an interest area, a nerve or the heart.
This magazine has been blessed, since it earliest issues in the late 1980s, with a bounty of talented, dedicated and insightful columnists.
This issue carries only the latest editions of their ongoing collective contribution to a publication that is deeply grateful to both them and to those of you who read their work each time out.
Molly Dugger Brennan’s writing kinship to the late Erma Bombeck has been noted by more than one reader, as Molly’s love of family, dogs, food and fun combine to give us a knowing smile each read.
Nancy Henderson’s careful research and writing have educated us on creatures large, small, flighty and barely moving for decades now.
The walks that Leonard Adkins brings us have shrunk slightly in distance over the years but always keep an eye out for things natural, objects unusual and turns no one else would take. What else to expect from a five-time Appalachian Trail thru-hiker and author of countless books on hikes, walks and nature.
Joan Vannorsdall—she of two fine novels and many of the magazine’s most popular history pieces—deploys her natural curiosity, love of place and background as a county supervisor to have us fall in love with a new town every issue.
Fred and Jill Sauceman (in this issue their usual Flavors column is rested as they deliver a full feature of food delights) bring us an appreciation of all things culinary where the tastes are not just of the delicious, but also of the history, the nuances and of the family struggles and triumphs behind those unique mountain tastes.
Ginny Neil’s warm, playful artworks assure that her musings on things growing and green carry much of the tone of the voice we don’t get to hear as she sings in the garden, in the forest and beyond.
With this issue we begin a new column by another contributor whose work has graced our pages for decades. Bruce Ingram, long-time devoted husband and over recent years a granddad, brings his how-lucky-can-one-guy-be perspective to “Gifts of the Land,” which muses on those blessings in the context of another—his appreciation of and gratitude for living much of his life as his ancestors did, and thus assuring that his family is out upon that land and garnering from it both the natural bounty and the human lessons it offers.
Our thanks to writers, our thanks to readers.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2022 issue.
