Today's Opinions

Fred and Ethel are dead. And so are the Clampetts. The entire clan.

For two days I have mourned the loss of my neighbors-not the sitcom stars of 50 years ago but an entire convocation of spiders, presumably banana spiders, that have resided at my back door all summer and most recently decided to expand their lodging to the front door.

For the last three summers, I have watched their homes develop over days, weeks and months- lacework webs that bear intricate patterns and designs.

Visitors often dodged them and admonished me to tear them down.

I have a friend who keeps her watches and clocks set an hour ahead at all times. By doing so, this perpetually late creature of habit has convinced herself that she is always tardy, and when she does show up for appointments, she's on time or early.

Now of course, somewhere deep within her psyche she knows that her clocks and watches are wrong and that could give her incentive to dally more and being really, really late.

But she's used her imagination enough over the years that the con works, thereby saving her from embarrassment and reprimand from family and employer alike.

Chiefland's sewer plant personnel have listened to a salesman and come up with a way to cut their energy use, cut fuel use, and cut the amount of sludge the City Water Reclamation Plant produces.

If you read the story in another part of this newspaper, you thought it was a story about money and saving energy.

Really, the story is about building relationships and trust.

Randy Wilkerson said it was his working relationship with a sales rep from TSC-Jacobs Group, the company that supplies the city with much of its wastewater equipment, that led to the savings.