Pine Knot News - A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news

The ever-shortening sprint from Halloween to Christmas is on and, with it, the annual retrospection is underway, the tradition of reviewing the year inching ever earlier like the retail Christmas decorations going up before Halloween and the Halloween decorations going up before Labor Day and the back-to-school stuff showing up on Father’s Day. And so on. As the Hurry Up to get to the Next Thing intensifies toward ridiculous, elbowing out the notion of Carpe Diem in deference to FOMO, the more plodding of us wonder what the hell the rush is.

But it is. The rush, that is, is.

As such, th...