Enjoy some Bob Batz columns

If you get tired of reading this blog, click on the headline to read some columns by Bob Battz on the North Star Writers website.

Batz, a Flint, Mich. native and former BJ staffer, has been writing for daily newspapers for 46 years, the last 36 years at The Dayton (Ohio) Daily News. He has been teaching writing classes at the University of Dayton for 21 years and recently marked his 30th year as a volunteer firefighter/EMT with the Brookville Fire Department. Bob and his wife Sally — also a fire department EMT — have four children, six grandchildren, a 150-year-old house and a three-legged dog named Madonna. In 1981, Batz was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper series on Alzheimer’s Disease, which he later turned into a play called Long Goodbyes that was staged twice by a local theater group. His favorite things include October, Saturday mornings, fishing and Ernest Hemingway stories. His namesake, Bob Batz Jr., also is an award winning newspaper columnist in Piottsburgh:

Here are some teasers from Bob's columns:

December 25, 2006 You Know You’re Getting Older . . .
With all due respect to comedian Jeff Foxworthy, whose “You know you’re a redneck” one-liners have made his name a household word, here’s my take on ways you can tell you are getting older: You know you are getting older if . . .
January 1, 2007 E-Mail: The Worst of the Worst
I have a new hobby. I save the most useless e-mail messages I receive each day and I’m planning to write a book called “I Save the Most Useless E-Mail Messages I Receive Each Day.” If you spend any time at all on a computer, you know the messages I’m talking about. They arrive at all times of the day and night, they come from all over the world and they hype everything from Viagra to Christmas toys.
January 8, 2007 ‘Lordy, Flo, Don’t He Look Like Junior’
It was late in the afternoon and I stopped into a cozy little bar I‘d never visited before to wet my whistle, as they say. The place was quiet, except for an un-listened-to jukebox pumping out a 1980s country music song that included mentions of trains, pick-up trucks, mothers and jilted lovers. I ordered a beer, and the barmaid - a big woman with a friendly face - smiled sweetly as she set it in front of me. That’s when the guy sitting two stools to my left said, “Lordy, Flo, don’t he look like Junior, though?”
January 15, 2007 Get Your ‘Snug as a Bug in a Rug’ Home Now!
Sometimes, just for the fun of it, I check out the “Homes For Sale” ads in my favorite daily newspaper. I’m not looking for a place to buy because my wife Sally and I recently down-sized from the two-story, 150-year-old house where we lived for 32 years and I wouldn’t go through the process of moving again for all the money in the world. The reason I read the ads in the paper is I enjoy a good shot of humor now and then and some of them are funny as all get out. Like the one I saw the other day that began “Restful - Don’t get run over trying to keep up with the Joneses. You’ve paid your dues and now you can enjoy your retirement years in something more than just a bungalow.”