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By E.J.. Smith
Boo! With Halloween right around the corner, my prayer is that everyone maintain safety rules concerning COVID-19. It is up to us as parents and grandparents to protect them while they have fun, yet keep them out of harm’s way.
One idea to have fun is take a walk downtown to look at the scarecrows in front of businesses and vote for the one you like the most. I did, and enjoyed it immensely!
Congratulations to all the teachers, the principal, and everyone else who makes West Side Elementary a National Blue Ribbon School! I know I can speak for most in our area that we are very proud of you and honor the work you have done. See the “Elizabethton Star” for details of Wednesday’s festivities for the school and everyone involved in this great achievement.
Not again! I see that the new bike repair station at Hampton has already been vandalized. What mean people it takes to do this. I hope they can be apprehended soon and punished for this atrocious crime. They are just as bad as the deplorables who trash our forests and I totally agree that they are indeed the worst of the worst. 
Well, the time changes next weekend and that means winter is just around the corner. I don’t know about you but I absolutely hate it getting dark at 5 p.m. It kind of makes me want to go to bed at 6 p.m. We have to argue with our bodies that it is not really time to sleep, but to stay up and get things done. Let’s call our congresspeople and tell them we want Tennessee to drop this annual time change and leave it like it is in the summer. We may just get it changed. 
As for winter, I could do without it. I know it is the natural order of things for the seasons here to change. We do enjoy spring and its reawakening of the world around us. We love summer with all of its activities and will be even happier next summer for maybe then the COVID-19 virus will gone. (We hope). Next comes fall which we have always greeted with great anticipation, loving the colors that burst out on the trees  Winter can be lovely with the snow, but it also means some of us cannot get outside and drive where we want to. And the cold! I must be getting old, because it goes clean to the bone, freezing, it seems, inside and out. That I could do without! Maybe I should move further South in the cold winter months.
Don’t forget to vote! It is still your right and your obligation. If you cannot get to the poll, you can mail in your vote or vote absentee. From what I’ve read and seen on the news, it is still safe to do these last two voting methods. Remember what your daddy told you, “If you don’t vote, you have no right to gripe about what they are doing up there in Washington.”
You are in my prayers,
E.J.