Tag: family

  • Misplaced Sense of Shame

    Misplaced Sense of Shame

      Alienation. To be estranged, hostile or indifferent, especially where attachment formerly existed. We most typically think of alienation as the thing that occurs when couples separate or divorce. Alienation always precedes such break-ups. Bookstores have a wide swath of self-help books for those dealing[..]
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    03 02 , 2021 No Comments
  • Rise Up from the Country

    Rise Up from the Country

      Several years ago, while working on Mother of Rain, the beginning of the Appalachian novels I wrote, I snuck in late to the evening service at Christians Bend Church in Tennessee. I had not been in the church since 1968. The last time I[..]
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    19 12 , 2020 4 Comments
  • The Ring of St. Simons

    The Ring of St. Simons

    She gave me a ring; rose gold, with a Celtic Cross made of turquoise, a diamond at its center, this woman whose name I can no longer remember. I saw her sitting there, on a bench in a dark corner of a popular eatery in[..]
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    02 08 , 2020 2 Comments
  • Riding Shot-Gun

    Riding Shot-Gun

      I came across this photo while looking for another. Everyone in this picture has gone on to be with God except for me and the babies. The two I'm carrying and the one sitting at the table. That's Mama, the baby of her family,[..]
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    30 06 , 2020 No Comments
  • Cornbread, Calvinists & Covid

    Cornbread, Calvinists & Covid

    I made cornbread. The old-fashioned kind. You know, with corn meal and flour, not the kind that comes out of a Jiffy or Dave's box. There was a time when I knew how to make cornbread from heart, the way I do my biscuits.  Today,[..]
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    18 05 , 2020 5 Comments
  • Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Writing Memoir with Author Ann Hite

    Editor's Note: I first met author Ann Hite through her book Ghost on Black Mountain. It was one of the best ghost story novels I had read in decades. Ann and I share a love of Appalachia and the stories that come out of the mountains.[..]
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    06 05 , 2020 5 Comments
  • In Search of Ghosts

    In Search of Ghosts

      I went in search of a ghost story. A story as familiar to me as that of Esther or Ruth; stories which have been repeated to me since before I knew how to read myself. I can't remember the first time I heard the[..]
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    28 10 , 2019 No Comments
  • Butts to the Wind

    Butts to the Wind

    Like much of the nation, I have been following the hurricane news. My daughter was in Wilmington, , NC, on Monday and Tuesday so I followed it in part to keep her informed. As one of her friends remarked to me, "Not exactly the time[..]
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    05 09 , 2019 No Comments
  • An Easter Prayer for Us All

    An Easter Prayer for Us All

    It is 7:30 a.m. on Easter Day.  I am in a hotel in The Dalles, Oregon. Typically, we'd be preparing for church services on this Easter morning, but Tim had prom last night. Our family celebrated our Easter with family last weekend when we were[..]
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    21 04 , 2019 2 Comments