Cornershot
1. 41-vehicle wreck ties up traffic Sunday on I-81 in Rockbridge County
2. Virginia Tech football roster has holes on picture day
3. Medicare penalties hit hospitals in Roanoke, New River Valleys
4. Microfestivus beer event gets downtown Roanoke hopping
5. McFarling: 2 little numbers are a big hurdle for Virginia Tech football
6. DAN CASEY: Copter cost still stirring up dust
7. Arrest made in case of missing Nelson County teen
8. Roanoke farmers markets making local foods more accessible
9. Virginia attorney general's office grows under Ken Cuccinelli
10. Man's drowning is 5th in Lynchburg area
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
So we didn’t win the record Powerball jackpot, and the Publisher’s Clearing House sweepstakes isn’t looking too likely either.
What would you do if you actually won such a huge amount of cash? (I’d pay all my bills and taxes, until the money ran out.)
The late, great Homer Bast of Roanoke College used to tell us students that a million dollars was so much money for an individual that, unless you were trying to be wasteful, it would be hard actually to spend it all.
Of course, that was in the days when gas was a quarter a gallon, steak 98 cents a pound, a movie ticket was 50 cents, and a new Ford or Chevy cost a few bucks under $2,000. I guess a million just isn’t what it used to be.
Someone once said, “money is like manure — no good unless you spread it around.”
With a boatload of winnings, we could sure help stimulate the local economy, or really make a difference to a charity or endowment. Or maybe like Tevye, the everyman character who sings “If I Were a Rich Man” in the classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” we would finally have time to sit and read and pray, and answer questions from the learned men who would come to visit us because, as the song says, “when you’re rich, they think you really know.”
At the end of the song, Tevye wails a final question that we would all personally like to know the answer to before the next big lottery drawing: “Would it spoil some vast, eternal plan if I were a wealthy man?”
1. 41-vehicle wreck ties up traffic Sunday on I-81 in Rockbridge County
2. Virginia Tech football roster has holes on picture day
3. Medicare penalties hit hospitals in Roanoke, New River Valleys
4. Microfestivus beer event gets downtown Roanoke hopping
5. McFarling: 2 little numbers are a big hurdle for Virginia Tech football
6. DAN CASEY: Copter cost still stirring up dust
7. Arrest made in case of missing Nelson County teen
8. Roanoke farmers markets making local foods more accessible
9. Virginia attorney general's office grows under Ken Cuccinelli
10. Man's drowning is 5th in Lynchburg area
THE ROANOKE TIMES
