As the waters covering New Orleans rose higher and higher, our nation seemed to fall lower and lower. First there were the basic facts of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction--buildings knocked over, levies that gave way, a city flooded. Then came the looting, a disgusting spectacle that reminded us that barbarism always lurks just beneath the veneer of civilization.
An old joke among farmers says that North Carolina should drop its current motto--“Esse Quam Videri” (to be rather than to seem)--and replace it with something a bit more direct: “Tobacco is a vegetable.”
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As the waters covering New Orleans rose higher and higher, our nation seemed to fall lower and lower. First there were the basic facts of Hurricane Katrina’s destruction--buildings knocked over, levies that gave way, a city flooded. Then came the looting, a disgusting spectacle that reminded us that barbarism always lurks just beneath the veneer of civilization. 
An old joke among farmers says that North Carolina should drop its current motto--“Esse Quam Videri” (to be rather than to seem)--and replace it with something a bit more direct: “Tobacco is a vegetable.”
If you know me, you know my jokes. Here’s one that’s bad but raises a good question.
“What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it,” wrote Charles Dudley Warner more than a century ago.
If a stranger asked you to sign a blank check and hand it over to him, what are his odds that you would actually do it?
