Sure Cure for a Shopping Hangover
I have a shopping hangover, and I’m not proud of it. Black Friday and Cyber Monday caused it, making me feel like I had to be part of the rush to get the best deals. Would they be gone if I had waited? Probably, but does that really matter? What has me troubled is...
A Toast to a Happy Thanksgiving
This time of year I am homesick for family, for foods that have been made by generations of Southern hands, for places that seem like places in dreams it has been so long since I visited. It’s Thanksgiving and I am once again not with my family in Georgia. Even as I...
Ordinary Things
You may have noticed my absence in the past two weeks. I have been in an agitated state since the week of the 2012 election, partly because of the whole election frenzy but also because that same week my husband was finally offered a job. In the past four years he has...
Fiction As Art?
For about four years I have been hard at work on a novel, a project that has consumed my thought process for much longer than that. I have attended workshops about fiction writing and taken classes to learn the process of writing, an art form I believe encompasses all...
Mid-life Bucket List
This morning I was reading a wonderful blog called Press Pause written by my old friend and first college roommate Deana Graham. Here's the...
The Bravest Girl in the World
For a number of years in this country a debate about education has raged and still rages. The government periodically steps in to change the way teachers teach or change the standards students must meet or invent new tests to measure student learning. But it seems...
He Seemed Immortal
Often my mother calls me with news that someone I knew when I was growing up has died. The same thing happened about a month ago and filled me with an ineffable sadness. She told me a man who had worked for years for our family and for the family business, Holmes...
He Walks with Lions and Elephants
My friend Barb Laedtke is such an interesting and generous friend. I’ve known her for 13 or 14 years now, but the longer I know her the more interesting I think she is. I am struck by her hospitality and her ability to have a conversation with anyone making whomever...
Remembering A Hero
Last Thursday I got a call to teach a class at the technical college where my friend Barb works. I was thrilled to accept the position, but I only had a week to prepare for a class I had never taught before. Brainstorming, scrambling, and praying for guidance and...
Brown Turkey Figs
One of my favorite memories is picking figs with my Grandmother Holmes. I was very young. I’m thinking around five or six. She needed to pick some figs from the tree in her backyard. We took a dishpan and walked around to the back of the house. There next to the big...