Paul Reid is The Palm Beach Post's big hitter -- and deservedly so. He does what he wants and does it well. We still recall a Reid piece on cockfighting from a couple years back that was as beautifully raw as a peck to the eye. His prose is elegant, concise, witty -- in short, everything lacking from most daily newspaper stories. Reid spends a lot of time doing restaurant reviews nowadays, which is fine. Dining at tony restaurants on your employer's dime is no doubt a plum assignment. But lucky for us Reid still finds time to bear witness to other strange avenues of life in South Florida and beyond, from a millenium discourse with legendary sports broadcaster Curt Gowdy to a historical meditation on tobacco and the United States. Take this lead-in to a Reid piece on digital manipulation of photographs: "Once upon a simpler time, Henry VIII fell in love when he beheld a portrait in oil of his betrothed, Anne of Cleves. Alas, when Anne showed up for the wedding, Henry -- who had never met her -- took one look and underwent an immediate and total change of heart. Anne was ugly. Henry was royally ticked off. Anne was sent packing and her embellished portrait consigned to the royal attic. She was pretty as a picture, but pictures can lie." Now that's one story on this seemingly staid subject that we read to the end.