Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels.com A few months back, I retired from my gig as an unpaid but dedicated language and grammar grouch. Y’all could have sent me a few thanks and maybe policed your own copy for a change, but nooooooo! So I’m coming out of retirement with some hot tips on slang,… Continue reading Watch that slanguage!
Category: history
Remembering the good earth
We’ve spent a lot of time in 2018 revisiting 1968, which one of the newsmagazines at the time called “The Incredible Year.” I turned fourteen that October, a little young to fully grasp everything I saw, but half a century later, certain moments are as clear as day. One is the bulletin that interrupted the… Continue reading Remembering the good earth
Southern overexposure
Photo by Daniel Maforte on Pexels.com A problem facing writers like myself is establishing an identity. It helps if one’s homeland conveys gravitas (which sounds cool even if it’s a buzzword) and by default plants you in the same ballpark with giants like William Faulkner and Eudora Welty. So by virtue of the fact that… Continue reading Southern overexposure
A statesman speaks
When you're a reporter covering Congress, you listen to an awful lot of speeches. Many of these breathless bulletins concern vital issues like National Cub Scout Month and the renaming of post offices. Speeches can be pompous, sanctimonious, badly reasoned, highly partisan, dull, hypocritical, long-winded, or all of the above. They're sometimes thoughtful or heartfelt.… Continue reading A statesman speaks
Moving on
On the road from Birmingham to the beach there’s a town called Lockhart a mile or so north of the Florida state line. In the early 1900s, it was home to a rich pine forest and what was then the biggest lumber mill in the country. Today the only thing a visitor might notice is… Continue reading Moving on
Our roots and their keepers
Another box to look through as we declutter. This one sat in the basement, out of sight and definitely out of mind, since we moved in 14 years ago. The weight tells me it’s either very important or something once important, now useless. Inside is a magnificent old family history book, 1,315 pages long, published… Continue reading Our roots and their keepers