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A community is defined as much by its small stories of life as its big news events. This is a place where we hope to tell some of them. Some will be anecdotes, others observations. Some will have insight, others no obvious point. Sort of like every day life. We expect this to resemble more of a personal blog than others on this site. Think of it as the Triad's version of the New Yorker's Talk of the Town or the New York Times' Metropolitan Diary.

We want you to feel inspired to contribute. Tell us a story and send it in. There's a good chance we'll post it.

Driving through town this past Thanksgiving weekend, I couldn't help but notice newspapers piling up on some driveways. I can appreciate people not wanting to bother stopping the paper while they are out of town for a few days, but what's up with their neighbors? They can't walk over, pick up the paper and toss it on the porch?

I know that the concept of neighborhood and community has changed as cities grow, people become more transient and technology allows us to stay inside. But, really, you don't even have to know your neighbor to move their paper to the porch and eliminate that "we're-not-home-and-the-neighbors-aren't-paying-attention-so-back-the-truck-up-and-help-yourself" look. Have we gotten to be such a faceless kind of place that that simple courtesy is neglected or, worse, not even considered?

Of course, I didn't stop and do it. They were outside my neighborhood, and someone might have confused me with a robber. Don't need to be shot before Christmas.

I live in a oldish house with a number of large, old trees around it. This time of year it feels like a veritable forest. I have a powerful gas-powered leaf blower that takes care of most of the yard in an afternoon. There is one corner, though, right by the road, where it is easier to use a rake.

So, I had finished the yard except for that one area. I had put the leaf blower away. The grass was green and clean-looking. I was finishing up with the rake when a youngish woman walked past on the street. She stopped briefly and said, "I so appreciate you using the good, old-fashioned rake out here. Those leaf blowers makes such a racket and cause pollution. Doesn't it make you feel good doing it the old-fashioned way?"

I smiled and said yes. She didn't stop to share the joy with me.

Every year I ring the bell for Salvation Army. Yes, I know. It annoys some people as they are trying to get into the store. I used to be one of those people. But, as in the Christmas stories, my eyes were opened to the joys of charity. Other people's charity. I'd say that about every third person drops some money into the kettle, which is a pretty good average if you think about it.

A couple years ago, I was ringing during the night shift at Barnes & Noble at Friendly Shopping Center. It was cold, business was brisk and people were hurrying in and out. I smile at everyone who makes eye contact and wish most of them a Merry Christmas, but avoid watching them if they put money in the kettle. The amount they put in should be private, I figure.

Toward the end of the evening, a white Lincoln Continental -- the older, boxier, more elegant model -- cruised up to the curb. A man got out of the back seat and approached the kettle. It had always impressed me when drivers would see the kettle and make a special stop. So, I wished him a season's greetings and looked the other way, giving him a modicum of privacy.

Next thing I know, he had unlatched the kettle and was halfway back to the waiting car. "Hey, what are you doing?" I asked and stepped to follow him. I know it sounds like a dumb question now, but it never occurred to the naive me that someone would try to steal the money. He replied that he was with the Salvation Army and was picking up the kettle a little early. Even I recognized that as BS. But by the time I got to the car, he had hopped in, closed the door and was on his way.

I wrote the license number on my hand and called the Salvation Army contact, who called the police. An officer interviewed me the next day, and Isaid I could identify the guy, but I never heard what happened.

I didn't feel violated or angry or scared or anything that robbery victims say. Mostly, I felt foolish. Foolish that I let it happen and foolish that I didn't have my wits about me to stop him. I wrote an extra large check to the Salvation Army to try to cover the donations he took.

But it didn't stop me from ringing. I'll be the guy in the Santa hat at the Wal-Mart on Cone on Wednesday.

I saw a fist fight Sunday afternoon.

I was walking the dog, vaguely aware of a group of boys playing football in a neighbor's front yard. The sound of arguing broke through the usual noise of kids playing, and I looked up. Two boys, one significantly larger than the other, both about middle-school age, were face to face shouting at each other. As the larger boy turned away, his adversary pulled him back and sucker punched him in the face. The crack was audible to me about 100 feet away.

The larger boy dropped to the ground, but only for an instant. He leaped back up and grabbed the other kid in a bear hug, and they both fell to the ground wrestling.

An adult at the house swept onto the scene quickly -- the whole thing took probably 10 seconds -- and broke it up. Both boys were sent home.

Inured by routine stories of crime and movies of cartoon mayhem, I had forgotten how ugly even the tamest violence can be.

Across the street from my house is a lake. Actually, it's a retention pond that is dry now, but is normally only about a foot-deep when we aren't in a drought. Last spring, a friend put some crappie in the pond, and I could sit on my front porch and watch a Blue Heron hunt. He comes so often people stop their cars to watch.

I can sit on my front porch and imagine the deer in the woods on the other side of the lake. I know they are in there because I've seen them. Even though it's a thin strip of trees and dense brush that runs a three or four blocks in the city's flood plain, they're there. One day I saw a deer run along the street for two blocks before crashing back into the shelter of the trees.

I can sit on my front porch and watch the leaves blow past as they fall and contrast them with the reds and yellows and browns still yet to fall. Sometimes I imagine I'm back in the mountains. In the early mornings, I occasionally hear the call of an owl.

I live seven minutes from dead center of downtown if I catch a couple lights. I don't live in the country; it just feels that way sometimes.

How about you?

I don't look forward to ringing the bell for the Salvation Army every year. It's always cold. I've always got more work than time at the office. It's standing around ringing a little bell for two hours, for goodness sakes. That's the way I feel every year driving to the site. But I've learned that it is always, always worth it.

This year was no different. Scenes:

* An old woman told me that her father didn't make her wedding because he was a prison minister and the wedding conflicted with his prison ministry.
* A man stopped to cite a poem he claimed he had written called "Shame on Rudolph" having to do with Santa's lead reindeer and too much Christmas cheer. I wish I had memorized it because it was clever.
* A woman began to drop a $20 bill into the bucket when stupid me said, "You know that's $20?" She replied, "Yes. The Salvation Army helped me when I needed it. Now that I am able to give back I like to return the favor."
* A small child and her mother walked past and got about 10 feet away. The child stopped moving. The mother bent down and listened. The mother spoke and the child listened. The child then pulled her hand out of her mother's hand and crossed her arms over her chest. The mother pulled a dollar out of her purse and gave it to the girl, who ran back to me and put it in the bucket. I let her ring the bell for a few moments.
* A Loomis armored car pulled up in front of the store blocking my bucket and sat as the guards went in to collect money. They didn't share any of it with me.

By the way, I felt completely safe, but that was partly because five minutes after I got there, a police cruiser drove up, parked and an officer went inside. A few minutes later she came out with a woman crying in handcuffs who looked maybe 20. She sat her in the back seat of the car and talked to her through the window for the longest time. Then she sat in the front seat and filled out paperwork. Then she talked to her through the window again. About 45 minutes later, the two of them drove off.

What I should have done that time:

When you pass the Salvation Army kettle, drop in a buck. It's worth it.

When you live a busy life, monthly book club meetings always loom right around the corner. And there the novel rests on the bedside table with its lonely bookmark on page 53, weeks from the end.

"Sorry, not tonight, I have to get a lot of reading done before book club." she says. After a pause, she adds, "Although I don't know why I bother. Half the people who come haven't read the book. They just come to eat, drink and talk."

"You know," he says, "you should start a video book club."

"What?" she asks.

"Sure, you come. You eat, drink and watch a movie made from a good book. That way, you don't have to race through the book and then get frustrated when everyone else comes unprepared. You get to sit around and watch a movie with your friends and talk about it. You can still read the book, but the movie catches everyone up. And you have the added benefit of being able to act superior and pronounce the book as so much better than the movie. What could be more perfect?"

Are there enough opportunities? Oh yeah.

"Just like a man," she says, and turns back to her book.

For another idea, read our friend Dan Conover and Sunday's Times.

While researching this post at The Editor's Log, I dragged out my 1968 high school yearbook from Edison High School in Tulsa. I was 15, and we were moving to North Carolina a month later.

That's a humbling experience. Aside from the bad hair, bad fashion and bad photography, there are those intensely personal, yet oddly superficial notes inside that my classmates wrote.

Samples, complete with the original grammar and spelling:

The lewd:

Twins are bad
Triplets are worst
Sleep alone
Saftey first

Roger

Thankfully, I have no memory of Roger.

The inane insult:

John, you are rather dense but this doesn't affect your obnoxious attitude.

Bob

His last name is there but it's a scribble.

And the missed opportunity:

John, what am I going to do next year with you gone? I cannot bear to think that you will out of my life forever. You have been my secret lover since 6th grade at Patrick Henry! Love you, Jeanne.

Now she tells me.

I was sitting in Cheesecakes by Alex this morning, drinking a cup of coffee with a reporter when a man came in, took off his coat and I saw the pistol, holstered, attached to his belt.

I'm not sure he was a cop. I assume he was, being so brazen about showing what I hoped was his service weapon. He was in plain clothes and was big and broad. He wore shoes that looked like shoes a cop would wear, shoes that would be comfortable when walking, standing and going places another person might normally not go.

Still, I found myself wishing that I wasn't sitting with my back to him.

Got home late on Friday. Sat down to eat a sandwich and flipped on the television. My Night at the Grammys was on. It was a show in which they presented the top 25 Grammy performances as chosen by fans, they say.

Hey, I'm not proud of it.

But what kept me watching was Aretha Franklin, filling in for a sick Luciano Pavarotti singing "Nessun Dorma" from Puccini's "Tarandot." Breathtaking.

When those American Idol judges tell contestants they need to make the song their own, this is the example I'd point to.

Carving your initials into a tree, preferably with a loved ones' and a heart around it, is a time-honored tradition in literature, movies and Saturday morning cartoons. But does anyone actually do it? I never have, despite spending a large part of my adolescence camping in the woods.

I got my answer at the Greensboro Arboretum. Dozens of beech trees show the distinct signs of knife-wielding graffiti artists. Virtually all are initials and dates. One dates back to 1944; I'm guessing it is legit because it is wide, which is how carvings grow over the years.

I'm sure arborists are dismayed by it, and I would never promote it, but walking through the woods looking at all the "love" written on the trees was nice.

I was jogging on Saturday morning on my regular course, which takes me through a path in the woods by a creek. Because of my work schedule I normally go out in the dark and return in the dark. This being the weekend, I got a late start and the sun was nearly up. I ran right past the yellow sign nailed to a tree.

But something on it caught my eye and caused me to turn around.

"A fox has been seen nearby. Be cautious."

Hmmm. They're noctural animals, too. And occasionally rabid. I don't know how long the sign has been there. The information did make me run faster, though.

It took a few moments this morning before I realized that I didn't need to worry about whether Guilford County schools was on a two-hour delay like Forsyth and Davidson schools.

After 12 years of worrying about when to get the kids up, how to provide daycare in a two-income home and getting them to school in the mid-morning, that realization brightened my morning.

We were eating at Lucky 32 the other night, and I ordered a glass of wine -- a Malbec -- and the server asked: "Three-ounce, 6-ounce or 9-ounce?"

What? I'd never been asked about the size of the beverage outside of a fast-food restaurant. (Well, that's not completely true; I have been asked if I want to order an entire bottle of wine, but I think you get my point.)

In this day of Super Size Me, what a delightful innovation: Asking the diner what size serving he wants! Imagine the happy customers, ordering the amount of food they want, rather than ordering the standard more-food-than-even-a-teenage-football-player-could-eat plate. It's a bit more customer-focused than most restaurants I've been in, but they can learn.

I ordered the 6-ounce. Twice.

I love driving down Ridgeway in the evening at this time of year. More and more lighted balls are up in the trees, giving you the sense of driving through an enchanted holiday tunnel.

But it has spoiled me. Now when I see the two or three balls in a tree and no other decorations or anything nearby, it looks sort of, well, lame.

The warm weather has brought the squirrels back out. We have some potted flowers on the steps of our porch. Something in them attracts squirrels, who come up and dig in the dirt and sample the flowers. They only have a bite or two and apparently don't like the taste because they toss the remnants onto the step.

It irritates my wife in that way that only squirrels can. She treat the dirt with red pepper and that kept them away for awhile, but when she watered them, it washed the pepper out of the way and they returned. More pepper. Then more water. Then more squirrels.

Then more steam coming from my wife's ears.

Me, I've written down "BB gun" on my wife's Christmas list.

My wife and I were at a party talking with a friend. He was telling the story of his experience at the Spivey's Corner National Hollerin' Contest in 1979. It seems as if the guy he went with thought he was in line for the restroom when he was actually queued up for the Whistlin' Contest.

Yes, his friend wet his whistle and ended up being crowned national whistlin' champion.

As our friend was telling the story, he mentioned the guy's name. My wife said, what? He repeated it.

Wife: "He's a lawyer? In Raleigh?"

Friend: "He is a lawyer. He was getting his JD in Chapel Hill when I was getting my MBA. He was one of my best friends. But I don't know where he is now. We lost touch 10 or 15 years ago. I do think he grew up in Wake County, though."

Wife: "We know him. He's the father of one of our daughter's best friends. At Chapel Hill."

The next day, my wife called the guy:

Wife: "I have one question for you: Were you the Spivey's Corner Whistlin' Champion in 1979?"

Guy: "It's 'National Whistlin' Champion,' and yes, I was."

Small world...but not large enough when you hear this:

Seeing all the empty seats at the Panthers game in Bank of America Stadium today, do you get the idea that the marketing efforts to get people to sign up for the Dish Network by telling them that's the only way they can watch the Panthers-Cowboys game Dec. 22 has backfired?

We were lining up in the pew at our church's Christmas Eve candlelight service when a friend motioned us up to sit with his family. We hesitated because we were just about in place and the sanctuary was filling rapidly. My wife and I exchanged looks and we -- me, my wife and our two daughters -- moved to sit next to our friends. We exchanged quick greetings and settled in for the service.

I reached for the hymnal and found the first hymn, "Good Christian Friends Rejoice." It wasn't until after we sang the hymn and I remarked to my eldest daughter that this was the politically correct version of the original, that I looked at the front of the hymnal. Inscribed in gold on the cover was our eldest daughter's name. I did a double-take, in a split second considering and discounting the possibilities that she brought it or that our friends had planted it for us to find. I scanned the two other hymnals within reach to see if they had inscriptions; they didn't.

I silently showed it to her and her face registered surprise, then burst into a huge smile. She looked at me quizzically, and I shrugged. All I could think was that someone had gifted the hymnal in her name at her confirmation several years earlier. But neither my wife nor I could remember any notice of that.

This is a large church with many members and many hymnals. That we would sit at that pew at that time...well, its not a Christmas miracle, but it was a wonderful Christmas coincidence that made the service even more special.

Update: After reading this item in the newspaper, I received a note from the choir director: I read your story in the N&R about finding the hymnal at a Christmas Eve Service! If it had her name printed on the front in gold, then it is actually her hymnal! We present them to the children when they are in 6th grade if they have been in Choristers before they move on to Youth Choir, so that is what that is. She must have either left it at the church or perhaps never received it, but if you can find it again, you should take it home because it belongs to her!

On Saturday, I wheeled to the curb a broken down lawnmower that we had stored outside for a year, thinking we were going to fix it. It was rusty, one of the wheels wobbled and was scarred with what appeared to be bite marks from some wild animal. Oh, and it wouldn't start. Trash pickup is Monday, but I knew it wouldn't last that long.

It didn't. Virtually anything not in one of the city's trash or recycling containers gets picked up by someone in a roving band of scavengers. (And I mean that in the kindest way.) Yesterday's rain didn't deter the Sunday sweep through the neighborhood. The lawnmower vanished last night.

I have had broken tables, chairs missing a leg, weed-eaters with the electrical cord yanked out, and even bags of leaves picked up. What I presume to be the resourcefulness of these folks impresses me. And if it spares one thing from filling the landfill, more's the better.

Driving into town during morning rush hour on West Market Street is normally tense enough as drivers late for work or class consider the 35 mph speed limit as a guideline to be openly mocked. Driving into town during morning rush hour on West Market Street on Thursday during the "wintry mix event" was perilous.

At Market and McIver -- where Market is four lanes one way eastbound -- a minivan pulled out of McIver into the far left lane of Market, going west. That is, the wrong direction. There was no traffic coming; the light at the Market/Friendly crossover was red. I flashed my lights at the minivan, to no avail. The driver was on the phone. Perhaps she thought I was a gang member. More likely, she was too engaged in her conversation to notice me.

About 50 yards down the road, the light at Market/Friendly turned green and a wave of traffic came upon the minivan. She tried dodging the traffic for a few moments, wondering, I suppose, why all these drivers were on the wrong side of the road. In her wake, she left cars askew across four lanes of traffic.

Finally, the minivan pulled into a convenient driveway, out of the traffic. No accidents. I couldn't tell if she got off the phone.

Another day navigating the friendly streets of Greensboro.

I was out jogging before sunrise this morning. Normally, it's a quiet, peaceful time before most of the rest of the world awakens. Not today. You see things in the dark you don't normally see in the daylight.

At one home, the outside light alarm was flashing yellow. I saw a light inside and nothing appeared amiss outside. We have an alarm system, and the light occasionally goes off without anything wrong, I thought. I kept running.

Three doors down, a car's interior light was on. The house was dark. Normally, I would have tried the car door to try to turn the light off, but not this morning. Not with the car up in the driveway, and it pitch black outside. I kept running.

On the next block, I smelled wood smoke. Someone's up early with their fireplace roaring, I thought. Then I remembered those frequent stories about passersbys smelling smoke and calling the fire department. I could see no real signs of life in any of the houses -- it was very early -- I scanned the rooftops for chimney spouting smoke. Nothing. Nope. No. Ahh, yes, there's one. I kept running.

Toward the end, I passed a police car, dome light on, stopped at the end of a street. Inside the officer was filling out paperwork. He didn't notice me, but it made me feel better.

I kept on running.

I try not to collect books, but they seem to follow me around. You look up one day and they are stacked on top of shelves and on the floor; they make your home look like you're one of those reclusive nutjobs who never throws anything out. And if you're a bibliophile, just try to part with a book. I put one in the trash the other day -- it was just too old and worn out to salvage -- and I felt as if I was burying my beloved dog.

So when one of my co-workers said she had just discovered John Irving and had not yet read "The World According to Garp," I eagerly loaned her my 30-year-old copy of the hardback. But not before I bored her with my glowing review of it. I'm not even sure what I was doing with a hardback 30 years ago. The price for this one was $10.95; expensive on a beginning reporter's salary. It would certainly bring $27.95 if published today. Unfortunately, it's not a 1st edition. I haven't cracked it once since I read it, so why have I kept it? Because someday when I have more time, I'm going to reread it. Really, I am.

I tried rereading "On the Road" and "Lord of the Rings" recently, both of which I loved when I read them at 20. I couldn't get through either. Both were written in the 50's, as was I. Means that one of us is getting old. Don't tell me which. I tried rereading "Lonesome Dove," but the TV mini-series, which I loved, ruined the imaginative power of McMurtry's written word.

Like virtually everyone else in the free world, I was disabled this week by what I considered an uncommonly powerful strain of the common cold, but is better described by its street name, "the Crud."

Upon feeling the oncoming symptons, I did what I was supposed to. I denied them. Then I began taking over-the-counter zinc. Didn't stop the tide. The next day, I was down for the count.

As a result, I began pawing through all of the cold medicines we had accumulated over the years. Tylenol this, Advil that, Cepacol here, generic there. I took some pain reliever and tried unsuccessfully to remember what I had read about the over-the-counter medicines and whether or not they actually helped. Oh well, let's try some of everything.

When you feel this bad, it's hard to tell whether any of them actually worked. It's sort of "imagine how you would have felt had you not taken it." But I do know one thing that worked.

I found some children's cough medicine that had expired two years ago. The intended recipient is now in college. I debated briefly whether it could actually hurt me or whether the expiration date was simply the drug maker's way of scaring us into buying more product. I drank the directed two teaspoons for a 6-12 year-old and resisted the temptation to double the dosage.

Stopped coughing almost immediately. And I'm still alive.

We were in the cathedral that is Cameron Indoor Stadium. Duke vs. Boston College. An announcement comes over the PA: Please do not take flash photographs inside the stadium.

The last time I heard a similar announcement was in the Sistine Chapel. Signs at the entrance requested -- stated clearly, actually -- that flash cameras were not allowed. The hall was jammed with people, so many that it was hard to move. Guards routinely and forcefully announced that people not use their camera's flash. People routinely and blatantly ignored them. Guards responded by shining the rays of laser pointers into the lens of the poised cameras. People turned away, not sheepish or even furtive, and framed another photo.

I don't know if it occurred to the amateur photographers that they could get better photos of the same masterpieces at the gift shop.

In the Sistine Chapel, I figured the scofflaws would get their reward in heaven. At Cameron, I guess the violators just got tossed.