Welcome to my blog. Here are some true tales about growing up Southern and some stories about how everyday things are sometimes more meaningful than they seem.
It Happened Like This & Other Stuff
When Songs Plus Memories Add Up to More
Isn’t it strange how sometimes a series of small seemingly unrelated and not especially meaningful occurrences suddenly get pulled together by some other minor happening so that they add up to something bigger? A new [...]
Pen, Paper, and Nerve on the Go: More Remarkable Newspaperwomen
There is a scene in my novel Found in Pieces where Pearl Goodbar, the story’s main character, gets to hear two of her journalism role models speak at an event that actually occurred in real [...]
Some Things Ain’t Funny Till They Are: Driving Then and Now
Did you ever have something happen that made you so hopping mad you needed a good long time to put it into perspective? No? Then maybe you don’t drive, because if you do, I don’t [...]
From Human Rights to Muckraking: More Waymaking Newspaperwomen
Pearl Goodbar, the lead character in my novel Found in Pieces, has guts. And she stands on the shoulders of giants. Readers say what they like most about her are her work ethic, her dogged [...]
Pearl and the Pioneering Newspaperwomen Who Paved Her Way
While I was writing Found in Pieces—my second novel about the 1950s South—no one asked me why I chose a woman newspaper editor as the main character. But if they had, I would have said, [...]
“Getting Right” with Racial Equality and Equal Justice
This blog may aggravate some people, though it shouldn’t. In any case, as a long-time professional educator and historian and now an author of novels intended to illuminate the evils of racial discrimination, I would [...]