If we deny redemption, we’re all damned … You may have heard of Daryl Davis. He’s a black guy who hangs out with Klansmen. Not because he’s sympathetic to the Klan, but because he believes at least some of them can change their ways. He says once the friendship blossoms, the Klansmen realize that their […]
Think 2 words: hot and thin … Both my grandmothers lived into their early nineties and cooked with cast iron into their eighties. My mother still uses her pans in her eighties. My father did until he couldn’t get around the kitchen anymore. I inherited three cast iron pans from my grandparents — a flat […]
Sgt. Pepper’s is still iconic, but Keith has a point … Perhaps it was the North Carolina summer heat that loosened him up. It certainly wasn’t the marijuana. June 30th, 2015, was a real paint-peeler in Durham, NC. Thermometers pegged out at 91° (33°C) and the humidity outside was an equally oppressive 91% as Rolling […]
Fairness demands that anti-vaxxers be ostracized … Go around telling people you are all that matters and they don’t, and you can expect to be a social pariah. Because you chose to be. Yet millions of Americans are now telling their compatriots that their own comfort and convenience matter more than everyone else’s health and […]
They weren’t designed to stop you from catching the virus … Today I read a breathless, almost panicky article by a popular writer on Medium, spreading paranoia about failing vaccines. The vaccines are not failing. People are freaking out because vaccinated people are testing positive for COVID-19. So please, be aware, the SARS-Cov-2 vaccines were […]
They say history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Well, on January 6th, 2021, Trump and his insurrectionists were singing Dixie loud and clear. Old times there, it seems, are indeed not forgotten. It’s one thing to remember past evils so as not to repeat them. It’s quite another to give them CPR. And make […]
It’s not just ON the flag, it IS the flag … Last summer I heard a radio journalist say Mississippi was the last US state with a Confederate emblem on its flag. That flag has since been retired, but the reporter was wrong. The Confederate “Stars & Bars” still flies over one US state to […]
North and South have each spun their protective mythologies … At half past seven on a chilly spring evening in 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander “Little Alec” Stevens pronounced from the stage of the Savannah Theatre, to the raucus enthusiasm of the crowd spilling out onto Chippewa Square, the central doctrine of the newly formed […]
Simple secret makes egg shells peel perfectly … In the American South, deviled eggs are nearly a contact sport. I know a pair of sisters who maintained a seventeen-year fued over paprika. (Don’t ask.) Indeed, many a church supper’s been silently plagued with pride, envy, gluttony, covetousness, perhaps even inklings of lust over deviled eggs. […]
Take this step to allow your pets to properly grieve … My father’s dogs were fiercely protective of him. We’d managed to keep Dad at home during his last days, in a hospital bed we set up in the front room, and when he died we were worried how the dogs would react to strangers […]