Emily Paine Carter

Recent columns

• Readers write of run-ins with political bigwigs
• Recording holds clues from 6 decades ago
• Rubbed shoulders with any big names?
• Column archive

Welcome to "Fall Composting Time" -- outdoors and indoors. Turning over some old leaves -- yummy and cozy for the garden -- reminded me to root through the piles o' paper on my desk.

My office could use some pitchforking. I'd been haunted by our recent ghostly topics, which buried everything else under white sheets of printed e-mailing.

Having such a plethora of paranormal reports was just plain weird in the realm of journalism. In past years anxious reporters have called, seeking to fill their Halloween column-inches with ghost stories -- and I've scrambled to find one of my own.

And still the topic has me in its icy-fingered clutches. Shortly after you read this, I'll be huddling with Roanoke College associate professor Tom Carter's freshman composition class. Students conduct an all-night investigation of Salem's possibly haunted "Monterey" mansion each year -- all in the interest of sound academic principles.

Both Carter (still no relation) and Virginia Appalachian Mountain Paranormal investigator Jammie Spradlin insist on the same rule: "No screaming." I'll let you know how it goes -- probably after New Year's, since now 'tis the season for festive or heartwarming stories.

Meanwhile, here are those promised select short subjects. I reckon I'm fond of such, since I'm a "short subject" myself:

• Anne Lee Stevens called to report having seen Salem native Connie Vecellio on NBC's evening news broadcast. Now a federal government lawyer in New York, Connie opined about commuting. Anne Lee and I had chatted with her at this summer's first-ever "North Cross/Salem" reunion.

• Glenvar resident Harold Bowman contacted the "Neighbors" phone line to inform me of a coincidence -- oh, I so love coincidences!

It seems that the owner of Pop's Ice Cream -- featured in Neighbors on Oct. 5 -- is the man who bought Bowman's mighty hornets' nest -- the topic of the previous week's column.

The same day that I received this message, I spied a peculiar catalog item -- from one of many peculiar catalogs: a fake hornets' nest, for fooling bands of would-be hornet squatters away from settling where you don't want 'em. Not that I could think of many places where I would want the stinging, swarming beasties.

• Good for what-ails-ya' -- especially if you have "the rockin' pneumonia and the boogie-woogie flu": The Rhythm Doctors; The Royal Kings; Key West; and Cawford, Burton & Ball are set to play the Hotel Roanoke on Nov. 23, 7 to 11:30 p.m. Plan to come shake a tail-feather and work off some of that wretched excess you know you'll have consumed at your Thanksgiving groaning-board.

Rhythm Doctor Andy Hough wrote that the $25 tickets are available at the hotel, Salem's Longbranch Restaurant, Cal Spas, Glassner's Jewelry and Perry Calligan's KINGS Entertainment.

• Col. Roy M. Kinsey shared this nugget of knowledge: Shakespeare penned "glisters," not "glitters," in "All that glisters is not gold." Could my inner cranky, picayune proofreader dare to tweak the Bard's line? To, say, "Not all that glisters is gold"?

Anyhow, thank you, Colonel, for sending this ol' English major scurrying to her trusty "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" for a 1249 Latin version and lines from Spenser, Dryden and "Don Quixote."

• But far more than that, here's a thank you to that "once-a-Marine-always-a-Marine" and to ALL our veterans -- and to those still serving -- on Veterans' Day ... and all our days.