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One Woman's Opinion

Welcome to “One Woman’s Opinion,” a long term feature of the Southside Sentinel, written by Urbanna resident Mary Wakefield Buxton. Traditionally a humorist, Mary has written a column on all subjects and sometimes in very serious vein. Along with writing a column  for the Sentinel since 1984, she is also author of 15 books about life and love in Tidewater, Virginia. Click here for available books.

Urbanna’s ‘big brass’ boundary brouhaha: Part 5

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 Part 5 The prayers of writers are sometimes answered even though they don’t necessarily attend church services. And so the very next day a terrible storm hit Nimcock County tearing across the land, uprooting trees and taking off roofs of many houses. And most conveniently helping Merrypen find a way out of the “big brass” boundary...
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Urbanna’s ‘big brass’ boundary brouhaha: Part 4

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 Part 4 By now everyone in the charming town of Nimcock had taken sides. Who could not take a side? Everyone was talking...

Urbanna’s ‘big brass’ boundary brouhaha: Part 3

Part 1 • Part 2 Part 3 The lawyers had been selected, the distinguished Ronald E. Widget (who some in the county felt was totally unscrupulous) and the candy Enos F....

The ‘big brass’ boundary brouhaha continues

Part 1 Part 2 A  week or two passed by with not much more interchange between the Army and the Navy much to Nimcock’s relief. No one liked blow-ups between neighbors...

The ‘big brass’ boundary brouhaha

(Editor’s note: Before passing away this month, “One Woman’s Opinion” columnist Mary Wakefield Buxton completed a special five-part series, “The Nimcock Chronicles.” The following column is the first in...

One Woman's Opinion

“Sorting treasures of the past”

URBANNA — Time to ’fess up. I had a closet upstairs that was so packed with boxes I couldn’t enter. It was filled with Father’s paintings, etchings, poetry, diaries, newspaper columns, stories, magazine articles, manuscripts of published books, three manuscripts from unpublished books and everything...

Take “I’m Offended!” test

URBANNA — Just how offended are we? Let me count the ways. How many times do we hear someone say… “I’m offended!” Recent subjects that have offended people include: American flag, National Anthem, monuments ranging from Jesus Christ, Christopher Columbus, slave-owning presidents like Washington and...

“Clear the streets! Octogenarian headed this way!”

I never thought it would happen. How could I ever grow old? I’m just a teenie-bopper caught in the body of an old lady, a laugher, finding humor everywhere I look and a believer that definition of comedy is  … “If it moves….it’s funny!”

“Come, let us gather”

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA — "The  worst are full of passionate intensity …” So said poet William Butler Yeats. When I read these words in the “Second Coming” I gasped. It was as if he wrote these words just for me. It took a while...

Bidding adieu to a long, hot summer

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA — As I type this column it’s 90 degrees. Such heat keeps most of us inside in air conditioning and unable to do much outdoor activity. I manage to walk the dog early in the morning and a bike ride...

“The buck stops here,” Truman famously said

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA — Remember President Harry S. Truman? Yes, a few of us may remember the 1940s and the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the close of World War II elevating Vice President Truman and his solid Midwestern values into...

Columnist makes a “defense of hoop skirts and other virtues”

It was easy for me to evolve into a cheerleader for tolerance because writers cannot work without a tolerant society that supports freedom of expression.

“I come not to praise Caesar …”

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA —July 22, 2021 With the 3-2 vote last week from the Middlesex County Board of Supervisors approving the removal of the monument at the courthouse of the Confederate dead, I find I am most disturbed and must again take up...

Letter’s words offer hope

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA —July 15, 2021 Last week’s letter to the editor in the Sentinel from Nancy West of Wake was a heartbreaking lament on how she remembers her past growing up in Middlesex County. She wrote of painful memories of racial discrimination that...

Musings while moving into summer

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA —  I hope I’m done with masks. After over a miserable year in isolation and properly masked whenever I ventured out, I have had enough. I received both vaccines in March and encourage everyone to do the same. I...

End of an era conclusion: All that remains are memories

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA — It wasn’t always smooth sailing for Grandfather. The factory burned to the ground in 1925. The news came to F.W. by telegram as he and his two teenage sons, Fred and my father, George, were in Florida on the...

The end of an era, part five: Memories of Grandmother

by Mary Wakefield Buxton -  URBANNA — I was lucky to have known one grandparent, Mary Poley Wakefield; born in New York the latter part of the 19th century, she died in 1951. I have treasured memories. Children need grandparents to connect them to their heritage. Grandmother...
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