Tag: Mama

  • Ban the Bible

    Ban the Bible

    [caption id="attachment_7025" align="aligncenter" width="940"] He who controls what you read controls what you think...of if you think at all.[/caption]   The first book I can recall Mama ever reading to us was the Bible. Brother John and I would sit at the dining room table,[..]
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  • 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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  • Remembering That Which You Cannot Forget

    Remembering That Which You Cannot Forget

    Editor's Note: This is a repost from Christmas 2012 originally titled Getting Mama Ready.   In 1966, when we got word of my father’s death, it was my brother’s crying that frightened me most. The way he beat at the wall and yelled about the[..]
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  • My Nomadic Mama

    My Nomadic Mama

    [caption id="attachment_2214" align="aligncenter" width="584"] In Hawaii with Mama in her Jackie O days.[/caption]   Her bible is sitting on my desk. One of many my mother studied. There's a pair of black-handled scissors laying across it, and a postcard for one of my books. The[..]
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  • It’s My Party

    It’s My Party

    Today is my 59th birthday. I can hardly fathom it. I feel like I've finally mastered some game that has granted me access to a warp zone where everything goes faster, where the Novembers seem to bump up right next to one another, where the[..]
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  • Words of Wisdom from Mama and Hank Williams

    Words of Wisdom from Mama and Hank Williams

    I am of that bridge generation. I remember when lives were private matters, when the only persons who knew the latest news and most of the town's gossip were the Baptist preacher and the party-line operator. But that was another life-time ago. A time before[..]
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  • If God had a mama

    If God had a mama

    God is an orphan. As far as any of us know, he had no father, no mother. He had to learn to scrap by on his own from the earliest of time. He didn't have a mother to tell him when to switch the lights[..]
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  • The Power of the B-I-B-L-E

    The Power of the B-I-B-L-E

    I love the Bible. I love it for its poetry. And I love it for its song. I love it for its wisdom. And I love it for its hope. I love the way it gives comfort, like a mother or a father reaching out[..]
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  • The Promise of God

    The Promise of God

    [caption id="attachment_1246" align="aligncenter" width="644"] Mama, Daddy. Jim. Clinch Mountain. June 28, 1953.[/caption]   I woke to the beat of rain pouring down, and the far off sound of an unhappy and likely very wet dog barking. The last Christmas I woke to rain was at[..]
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  • Ode to Piggly Wiggly

    Ode to Piggly Wiggly

    Perhaps you have heard the  news? Piggly Wiggly has been bought out. It's like someone has come in and hacked away part of my childhood. I can't imagine a world in which the Piggly Wigglys of the world disappear. Vestiges of my growed up years markings[..]
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