The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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I was a big fan of Little Lulu when I was a kid growing up in Sandflat. Little Lulu has been around a long time. She was introduced in comic strip that first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in 1935. The loopy haired, quick-witted Little Lulu Moppet was intentionally a girl. Creator Marjorie “Marge” Buell explained that a girl could get away with more than a little boy. The single panel debut had Little Lulu appearing as a flower girl who was strewing the aisle with banana peels rather tha...
Imagine if you will two women driving down the Florida Highway. My friend Shirley and I had spent a few leisurely hours spinning the reels at WindCreek before buying a few chances on the Mega Millions at “The Goose” and taking backroads home. We had also went through the Arby’s drive-thru and taken advantage of their four for ten dollar roast beef deal and everything was going along exceedingly well, until it wasn’t. Initially we thought it was the road surface. We were traveling smoothl...
Thirty-two years ago, I lived in Montgomery. I was freshly enrolled as a full-time student at AUM, and a part-time waitress at Country’s Barbecue. I was 18. Barbara, who was 45 at the time, was originally from where I had just left – having graduated from Chilton County High School in May of 1990 – and that commonality is what helped pave the way that allowed me to live with her briefly when I first moved to Montgomery. The agreement was $100 a month and a list of things she did not want me do...
Every year I claim to myself that I am going to write an official Christmas column. A column good enough to run every Christmas when the days just prior become so rushed and busy. Something classic and timeless and wonderful. Something that everyone can enjoy year after year. Words that fill hearts with the spirit and cheer of Christmas. A thought provoking piece that reminds all minds the real reason. I still haven’t written it. At least not yet. When I do though, it would have to include s...
I bought a purse last week I will probably never use. It is small. A simple zippered change pouch. I don’t need it, and it doesn’t particularly suit my taste. It is not my shade of pink. Typically, I think it might would appeal to someone much younger, but I touched it. I felt the texture of the beadwork…and it reminded me of a similar beaded change purse I had when I was a kid. The church my family attended would have an annual Family Day. Or at least that is what we called it. It was meant...
Remember how legendary columnist Lewis Grizzard used to write about how he could hardly wait for Cathy Rigby to go through menopause so she wouldn’t be in commercials advertising feminine care products anymore? He said he didn’t care if it absorbed the entire Atlantic Ocean, he didn’t want to sit in his den and hear about it on television. There wasn’t much that was off limits for Lewis. He wrote unapologetically from his perspective as a man who had been raised in a small Georgia town. He cont...
In Camden…poor little small Camden, we have limited restaurants of any kind. Fried chicken is widely available. There are more places to buy fried chicken than there are gas stations or red lights, but still the number is limited. Add to that the fact that Wilcox County has never not had the highest unemployment in the state. So there are people who evidently need jobs, but restaurants here are never fully staffed. They are always hiring. The staff shortage is so severe that it is no longer u...
I heard a report last week suggesting one way to deal with inflation is to live with your parents. As a parent, I would suggest that this might not be a viable plan. And let me go ahead and make a disclosure, because I understand we live in a sensitive culture. To this day, I know if I have some kind of crisis, I can show up at either of my parent’s doorstep, and they will shelter me. I offer this same umbrella to all of adult children who have already moved out and married and multiplied. B...
I don’t encourage a whole lot of dabbling in soul searching, but consider questioning your relationship with whoever it was that encouraged you to vote for Joe Biden. I didn’t. A lot of us didn’t. Granted, not enough of us didn’t, but finally, we have no qualms about admitting it. It is easier than ever to explain why. Even easy to recruit some over to the other side. The sect of the population that needs a pop star or a half-ass celebrity to tell them who to vote for maybe shouldn’t vote. Jus...
Nina Jankowicz, the executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board resigned Wednesday. She explained in her resignation letter that it was because the future of the board was uncertain. Later the same day, the new White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre – widely touted as being the first gay Black White House press secretary – read the statement from the Department of Homeland Security saying plans for the Disinformation Governance Board have been placed on pause due to the...
It is difficult to watch Russia’s invasion of Ukraine isn’t it? Since the beginning, citizens of the world have watched helplessly. As individuals, it can feel as if there is practically nothing substantial we can do to help as the war continues rage on after 50 days. We can donate or we can pray, but it seems much too little too late either way. It is hard not to look away from the images and videos coming out of Ukraine. It is reminiscent of World War II for people who were not even born yet...
The Alabama Legislature has once again introduced a lottery proposal that would give voters the opportunity to choose whether or not Alabama can have a lottery. It is one of the only states in the union not to have a lottery. They do this every year. I write about it every year. They meet, and talk, and wring their hands, and second-guess themselves. They open it up for public discussion. Then they get anxious and table whatever plan they were considering and agree to start over from scratch...
The United States surgeon general has issued a report stating the negative effects social media platforms are having on mental health, especially in teens and young adults. The platforms generate feelings of loneliness and erode self-esteem. Social media has proven to offer the opposite of what the name states, allowing users to isolate while constantly comparing themselves to others. This has been exacerbated further by the pandemic. There has been a rise in suicide attempts, depression,...
Even before daybreak, you can hear them singing their happy sounding songs from inside their swinging gourds. The purple martin song. It will soon be their season. They return every year from their winter homes in South America to raise their young. They fly the same instinctual path across the Gulf of Mexico. The first scouts start arriving in south Alabama in late January and early February. Those who consider themselves landlord’s of the purple martin, are already watching the afternoon s...
[Editor’s note: Introduction is from December 1, 2020] Before I launch into my topic this [month], I want to acknowledge what happened in Wilcox County yesterday. A long time, much-loved, retired deputy with the Wilcox County Sheriff’s Department, Deputy Madison “Skip” Nicholson, was killed by a gunman while responding to a domestic-violence call in the Yellow Bluff community. Chief Deputy Trenton Gulley was also injured, but is expected to recover. The whole county is shrouded today in sadness...
I’m sure I heard it somewhere, but I can’t remember where. Or maybe I read it. I don’t know. But for a few years now, when I think about the day after Thanksgiving – or Black Friday as it is more commonly known – I think about it being the first day of the season of excess. It, and the first day of the Christmas season, have somehow become one in the same. Last year, things may have been less excessive because of COVID. This year, it could be less excessive because of the excessive amount of...
The White House cannot guarantee Christmas gifts will be available this year. It is warning that you many not get what you want. It has never occurred to me before to consider that the White House is responsible for the availability of Christmas gifts, but Americans are being advised by the government to do their Christmas shopping earlier than the usual early this year due to supply chain issues. Approximately half of a million shipping containers carrying everything from fake snow to talking...
This week’s cooler air has been refreshing after a long Alabama summer…a summer that is likely not through. These first dips in temps are just teases. We know this. We know Southern summers linger late into October some years. Summer often won’t leave until ushered out by an early frost or chased away by the chilling ghosts of Halloween. By September’s end, most everybody is ready for a change of pace. College football is in full swing, days are becoming noticeably shorter, and the kudzu a...
It depends on how old you are, but most people in the United States can tell time by the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. There was before, and then there was after. Everybody remembers where they were. I was home. The kids were little, they were playing…too young to fully comprehend what was happening. It was before cell phones were common and my husband had called home from work asking what was happening. I was standing in front of the television. I had been glued to the s...
There are voices in other rooms tonight. Soft voices. Young voices. Granddaughters’ voices. Their brother – the baby – is asleep in an adjoining room. We were all worried if he could sleep, or would sleep. This is his first night ever away from his mama…and when you are one, being away from your mama is a big deal. His being the baby is about to change. He will have relinquished the title and become a big brother before daybreak. He doesn’t know. He will never remember a time before her. He i...
It is July. The hydrangeas are blooming. It has always struck me odd how it is that we can know something is coming up…we know it is on the way, and yet, we are still taken back a little by its arrival. I knew July was on the calendar. Knew it was next. But when I turned the page in my planner to the month of July…it didn’t seem possible. The clock seems to tick too quickly sometimes. It’s equal opportunity, but it waits for nobody. Turning the page to a new month feels like a fresh start....
Summer means different things to different people. To some it probably means nothing more than long days and hot nights. Unless you are a fan of the two…which I happen to be. I’m not sure anymore if I like summer because of the season itself, or if it has more to do with the state of mind. Or maybe it’s just the memories. In Alabama, summer is not defined so tightly by the calendar and temperature as it is activities. School being out adds more freedom for some – for teachers, and student...
By this time of the year, gardeners have already tilled their ground and formed their rows. They have sown seeds that by now sprouting and growing. The watching and waiting has begun. I like people who garden. There is a realness about them I appreciate. A lack of pretentiousness. I am from people who garden. They were good at it. If I look back at census records of my old family, they were listed as farmers. They have gardened for a long time. Growing up in Sandflat, I would follow behind my...
Sometimes, when I am in Montgomery, I make it a point to go out and have lunch with Hank and Audrey. Usually, I take fried chicken. They don’t ever say too much, and neither do I really. Nobody sings. If you are there and hear lonesome music, it’s probably only in your head … or maybe your heart. I go, I guess, for the silence, or the solace. It is a feeling. There is an energy there. Or maybe a spirit. I’m not sure. It is not something you can reach out and touch or take a picture of, at leas...
Alabama has delivered into the world many an eccentric personalities, one of those being the late Eugene Walter – an entertainer, writer, and chef who engaged in so many varied activities he was known as “Mobile’s Renaissance Man.” He grew up in old Mobile, back when women would dress-up in their finest attire – wear heels and put on lipstick – just to go shopping downtown on Saturday mornings. He could describe it in such a charming, and almost intimate way, that if you read his work even t...
