The big news this week is that Sunday is the end of Daylight Saving Time. We go back to Eastern Standard Time at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. So we will need to set our clocks back one hour before we go to bed Saturday night. If you have an elderly VCR as I do, it automatically set itself back an hour

last Sunday. This means that it will be daylight shortly after 6 a.m., but then that curtain falls about 5:30 p.m., and darkness sets in in a hurry. I don't know which time I like best. There are some things I like about each one. I just wish that it could be left one way all the year. But I will deal with it and won't have to wait around until 7 a.m. to have enough daylight to get my walking done.

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I had a nice surprise and treat this week. Sharon and Wayne Williamson spent some time last week in the New England states. They enjoyed stopping to visit various arts and crafts fairs being held during the fall in Vermont, Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and New York. In Stowe, Vermont, they attended the Hildene Fall Arts and Crafts Festival and visited the booth of The Marble Man where marbles were being handmade. Knowing of my love for and interest in marbles, they bought several of the prettiest ones for me. I've never seen handmade ones this pretty. The ones that I have are rather dull and not always round. I wouldn't like to get in a game of marbles using some of them. But the ones that Sharon and Wayne brought are perfectly round and when I hold them up to the light they are exquisite. Now I'm looking for just the right container to put them in alongside my other collections. . . . Sharon says that they also stopped at a booth where pottery was being sold and when the lady there found out where they were from, she told her that she had a good friend who had lived in Washington-Wilkes. It was Ann Wiley (married now) who was the "game warden" here for several years. At a booth where handmade jewelry was being sold, the attendant told Sharon, "Your voice is just like honey!" Sharon said she had never been told that before.

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It was 36 degrees on my back porch this morning. That's cold for October! . . . Last Friday's rainfall is not worth reporting.

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Remember when ladies wore "galoshes" over their shoes when they had to get out in the rain? I say ladies because I never saw my daddy put on a pair of galoshes, but mama always had them handy. (Maybe men wore rubber boots.) I used to have mama's last pair of galoshes, and I have been looking for them, the reason being that the Washington Little Theater Company is in need of a pair for the upcoming production of "Sanders Family Christmas." If you have such an oddity, call Jo Randall at 706-678-2083. . . . "Sanders Family Christmas" is the next production of the theater and will be presented the first weekend in December. The musical is a sequel to "Smoke on the Mountain" presented three years ago and has the same cast except for the part played by Joseph Baldwin. Zach Gebing has that part this time. Other members of the cast are Kay Nelms, Rick Price, Stan Coe, Emma Collins, Brian Baldwin, and Cindy Russell.

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Jillian Wells Andrews, the new Wilkes County Teacher of the Year, is a product of the Wilkes County school system. Jillian began her schooling in the Washington-Wilkes Kindergarten, and was an honor graduate of the Washington-Wilkes Comprehensive High School Class of 2000. She is a Pre-Kindergarten teacher in our school system. Jillian is the daughter of Vonice and Michael Wells; sister of Joyner Wells; and wife of Adam Andrews -- and nobody mentions food to her these days!

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Zeke is safe at his home in Logan Woods after a sojourn of about a week elsewhere. Zeke is the fiveyear old rat terrier of Dean and Susan Nunn that I mentioned here last week. He was missing for more than a week. When Dean came home from work one afternoon, there sat Zeke in his usual place on the deck and there was joy in Logan Woods. Susan says he had lost a lot of weight but otherwise seemed to be okay. I wish dogs could talk so he could tell us what happened to him and where he had been.

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For a week or so we have been having trouble with e-mail service between the school system and The News-Reporter. There have been some items submitted that might not have reached their destination and there was no way to check on them since we didn't realize there was a problem. If you have not seen an article that you submitted in the paper, please call the school or us here at The News-Reporter.

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I have been a fan of writer Nicholas Sparks since he first began writing. So has one of my co-workers here at The News-Reporter. I think we have both read all of his novels. Most of them are set in North Carolina, sometimes in South Carolina. We were very interested this week to learn that Marjorie Tyler's granddaughter, Natalie Tyler, is working with the crew that is currently filming a movie of one of his latest books in Charleston, S.C. Natalie is in charge of the wardrobe for the cast, and does other things, too. She is a cum laude graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and earned a degree in Film and Digital Media. Prior to this job, Natalie was administrative assistant to the executive producer of "Army Wives," popular television program. She is the daughter of Larry Tyler and Anita Dawson of Atlanta. . . . The title of the book being made into a movie is Dear John.

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Glen Kohlhagen, new (since April) pastor of the Washington Presbyterian Church, brought me an interesting and delightful article from the October 11 issue of The Star-News of Andalusia, Alabama. A couple of weeks ago a man by the name of Joe Wingarde and his cousin, Jo Driggers, of Andalusia, Ala., attended a symposium in Athens and when it was over decided to explore this area of Georgia before heading home. In the article which was written by Wingarde, he says, "We headed up a rural road to Washington, Georgia, a neat, clean town with not a sign of litter in sight, and were there in an hour or so. It was a lovely Sunday, and we were dressed in our best for church." He gives a little history of our town, then says, "Jo and I took rooms at the Fitzpatrick Hotel on The Square, a large, brick, bay-windowed, Victorian holdover, impeccably preserved. My room had four windows in its bay, overlooking the town square, some stained glass, antique furniture, two closets, a claw-footed tub, and ceiling fan. Being early for church, we rode around, seeing the Gilbert-Alexander House, the grand Campbell House with its swags of trained ivy and its columns, standing about like the gods of Olympus, the Mary Willis Library with its Tiffany window, and the quaint Presbyterian Church, where we worshipped. The congregation was small and elderly, and I felt right at home. A pipe organ supplied the music as we enjoyed a short, traditional, moving service led by the minister from Milledgeville, Glen Kohlhagen, a classmate at Columbia in Atlanta with Jerry Long, minister at the First Presbyterian Church, Andalusia. I especially enjoyed the verbal call to worship, the call to confession, and the prayer of confession in the Presbyterian Church, and singing the traditional songs, "Hear Our Prayer, O Lord," "Gloria Patri," and "The Doxology." . . . My editor is not going to print all this if I don't stop right now. But there are some personal things about the writer and his cousin that I want to tell our readers about, so I will continue next week. There is also information about the Alexander H. Stephens Home in Crawfordville.

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It's the last day of October and I can't let October get by without quoting these verses of "October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson. October 2008 has truly had bright blue weather.
O suns and skies and clouds of
June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour

October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumble-bee makes
haste,
Belated, shiftless vagrant,
And Golden-Rod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;

When on the ground red apples lie
In piles like jewels shining,
And redder still on old stone walls
Are leaves of woodbine twining;
When springs run low, and on the
brooks,
In idle golden freighting,
Bright leaves sink noiseless in the
hush
Of woods, for winter waiting;
O suns and skies and flowers of
June,
Count all your boasts together,
Love loveth best of all the year
October's bright blue weather.
(There are three more verses.)