The summer of 1977 has come and gone without Willie Nelson's traditional 4th of July picnic. Looking toward July 1978, Willie maintains that the picnics have been scuttled indefinitely.

Bud Wendell has a winsome grin, a firm handshake and great eye contact.He exudes enthusiasm and in an age where companies and employees no longer feel a traditional loyalty toward each other, Wendell's career path has proven by example that once-conventional two-way loyalty can still be upheld.

June was simply a delight: "I'm frightened to fly," she told me during a 1977 Country Song Roundup interview. "I didn't use to be, but that just comes with having all those seven children, I guess, and being concerned about them... Once, when she and Johnny were en route to Kamloops, British Columbia, she was surprised to read she had misplaced $200,000 worth of jewelry. June valued the "loss" between $5,000 to $10,000 since "a lot of the pieces were costume jewelry." The most upsetting aspect was that June's misplaced jewels, later retrieved, included her wedding ring. For June told herself at the time, "if the rest of it's gone, let 'er go. Somebody needs it worse than I do if I don't get it back."

Federal excise tax was eliminated from long-distance provider bills in 2005 and taxpayers were permitted to the take tax credit on their 2006 returns. Why, it was argued, in support of eliminating the levy, did the tax, first imposed on wealthy telephone owners to help fund the Spanish-American war in 1898, persist more than a century after the war ended? There was no good answer. So, repeating a variation of the question in expectation of the same response, I ask why is federal excise tax still collected on local phone service?

I cannot support Rep. Windle's bill that would add the phrase "In God We Trust" -- a motto that should likewise only be on the coins of those whose god is money -- to the state flag of Tennessee... it was equally wrong for the House to refer the bill to a summer study committee, rather than, in effect, permanently tabling Rep. Windle's bill. Those in opposition to it should have mustered the courage to vote it down.

As a Gaylord Entertainment Company stockholder, I find it outrageous that "my company" (a favorite phrase found in Gaylord's annual reports, until the company's financial losses in recent years, has been "your company"), having axed its COO Jay Sevigny, continues to reward Sevigny's poor performance. ("Gaylord Hotels gets new top brass," Feb. 15)

One of my earliest childhood memories is that of reciting the pledge of allegiance in my public school class in the absence of a student who was excused during the recitation. I haven't thought of Jeff, a Jehovah's Witness, in years. I remember him now in the context of...

Scott Simon, National Public Radio personality-turned-author, minces no words in this, his second book. And Simon's is just the sort of candor and perspective required to justify revisiting the oft-told tale of Jackie Robinson, the American hero who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier on April 15, 1947.

Religion and retail are not a good mix. Keep religion the private and personal matter that affords it a proper respect.