T.S. Eliot, occasionally ill at ease within himself and a chronicler of the phenomenon, wrote of the Mississippi, “The river is within us.” What then might the poet say of Waynesboro, where a river snakes and is eyed suspiciously, as if coiled and ready to strike?

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Nothing so confounds in the present day like an insistence on the part of those hewing right of the tolerance crowd to act on views deemed intolerable. Jerry Falwell Jr., son of and successor to Liberty University founder, has done the unthinkable in dropping the College Democrats chapter as an official club. The subsequent piercing shrieks of horror likely were enough to stir Falwell’s father, though not enough to turn him in his grave. Surely, he would have been pleased.

Leo Tolstoy famously observed a telling distinction between happy and unhappy families. It is reversed for towns: Unhappy towns are all alike, but every happy town is each happy in its own way. Well, almost. Some ingredients are common, but less so the mixes that stir towns to life. That which rouses one community might not rouse another.

Perhaps having been suitably perturbed by its previous inanity while attempting to flex nuclear muscle – a missile launch last month failed in the middle of three phases – North Korea hitched its drab-green britches, shook fists and pressed buttons again over the holiday weekend.

In the wee-hour darkness, the stocky young colonel stood on an earthen mound gazing into the faces of the 750 warriors before him.

Recipes for stirring angst seldom are written in the simple form of, say, a recipe, but most people clearly know how to do it.

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Drawing horses and cattle from the nether reaches of fields frequently involves the fine art of rattling feed in buckets. Drawing homeowners from the nether reaches of living rooms is a tad more detailed, frequently involving plans for developing neighboring property. At least cows can’t carry torches.

Government helps in the manner of a gentleman pugilist, with a hand up and a fist to the face. American carmakers, as have some farmers, are learning to beware the first hand as much as the second.

Somehow, amid the thundering of hooves shod in loafers and heels, Pat Berrang managed to turn from the precipice to which he was herded by a plan to snatch away his General Motors franchise in Waynesboro.

As the sheen beams brighter in the mecca known as Waynesboro’s West End, gloom thickens downtown.

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What passes for a sage in Maine, Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, observed, “Ideological purity is not the ticket to the promised land.”

The plan led by local developer Bill Hausrath to bring a 12-screen cinema along with retail, offices and housing to the West End is a jolt of good news and a demonstration of the entrepreneurial spirit needed to kindle economic recovery.

Benjamin Franklin found many of his countrymen despicable but none quite so like the pretenders huddled in government halls: “A publick Hypocrite every day deceives his betters, and makes them Ignorant Trumpeters of his supposed Godliness.”

The Grim Reaper’s blade has been dulled, but not before making some bloody cuts.

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Few favored phrases in the political parlance can match frequency with the dread “unfunded mandate,” a cry that rises whenever government imposes with one hand while leaving closed the one clutching the money. Responses from school officials to the words “No Child Left Behind,” for example, are patellar: Utter the phrase, and the knee jerks with the bleat: “Unfunded mandate.” So now Republicans have picked up the linguistic hinge on which Democratic money reaches commonly swing.

God made the world in seven days, while Barack Obama has needed the better part of 100 to make over America, thus proving the existence of a stunning albeit slender gap between a deity and a president whose restive liberal spirit yet hovers over the deep. God help us, he’s still not finished.

Excitement these days in Waynesboro is rare and fleeting, which perhaps explains the recent mild euphoria generated by piffle. This takes vague shape in the decision to purchase a $7,000 modular trailer to house the Rockfish Gap Tourist Information Center in a new home to open this summer atop Afton Mountain.

Among the challenges public school administrators and faculty confront – helping young people to learn academic rudiments, complying with sometimes ridiculous state and federal testing standards and, a big one, keeping young minds focused for the better part of a day – none may be more difficult than discerning amid shifting sands the proper boundaries for a culture that forever pushes.

Herding sheep, gentle but recalcitrant sorts, generally requires the services of a dog with skills.

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A popular admonition in sports and combat is to keep one’s head on a swivel, meaning to watch in all directions. President Barack Obama’s recent application of the concept with regard to prosecuting Bush officials over terrorist interrogations means Americans might be wise to be on the lookout, too, for another attack. Terrorists who are perpetually watching surely have seen our weakness showing.

Among the maladies affecting politicians are deprivations of senses along with sense. Some are deaf to the cries of constituents. Some can’t feel others’ pain. Some can neither detect the foul aroma of a particular policy nor its bitter taste. Vision? Some detest the very word. So comes Tim Williams, mayor of Waynesboro, absent an evident sense of himself.

A year occasionally makes a difference, and none hope so more than those who march under the banner of the Republican Party, a group suddenly believing in change, so long as it means a return to power rather than more of the wilderness wandering that began here with the election of Mark Warner as governor in 2001.

Congress returns to work seeking to go where Hillary Clinton as first lady has gone before, to discuss universal health care.

Anglers will slip today into the South River to conclude an annual rite in Waynesboro, the Fly Fishing Festival, which serves as the prelude to another to follow at week’s end, the city’s Riverfest.

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