Otterblog

There is nothing quite like a fresh, hot doughnut. Beignets in New Orleans at Cafe Du Monde. Daylight Donuts in Quincy, Ill., A Krispy Kreme at Stratford Road at 6 a.m. Knakal’s in Culpeper, Va. They’re all great. Hard to say any is better than the other. A doughnut lives in the moment.

Krispy Kreme, our local outfit that did, could, and maybe will again, is changing its marketing tactics. It’s hitting the airwaves, a change for a company that in headier times relied on coupons, word-of-mouth, and free publicity from all those glowing stories as it opened stores across the country.

Covering local companies through a boom and then a bust is a difficult job. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t write stories just to kick folks when they’re down. And the story line here is pretty irresistible. Hometown company makes good. Then makes great. Then becomes a national symbol of our town’s hustle and smarts. Then falls. Hard. Lots of careers and investments get wiped out.

It’s not quite on the epic scale of Enron. But it’s a grand tale of how the world works.

We learned Tuesday afternoon that Sen. Ham Horton had died of cancer.

Ham Horton was far from perfect, but he was in many ways a journalist’s dream senator. He understood issues, gave good quotes and wasn’t afraid to be on the wrong end of a losing battle against what many people considered progress. And he saved country ham as we know it.

I thought of Ham Horton when I watched the president’s State of the Union speech last night and the way the Democrats and Republicans rarely seemed to stand at the same time. Our system is one of partisan politics. People talk about making it less partisan, but that’s hard to do. If you read our obituary today, it’s clear that Ham Horton had friends on both sides of the aisle.

Realistically, what works best is partisan politicians who also revere the institution in which they’re elected to serve. In my book, that puts Ham Horton in the same category as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va. You may not agree with their votes or their positions, but they have respect for the rules of their chambers, are frequently entertaining and enlightening to listen to, and at their best make our government seem more noble.