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
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 [...]
Executive Orders, Senators, and Flying Motorcycles
Actually, there was only one of each. But that was enough to sandwich me between two U.S. Navy petty officers and dangle me in the air over the New Mexico desert during the Nixon administration.
I’ll [...]
The Naked Truth about Me and School Buses
The smallest things can trigger memories, whether they are pleasant or best forgotten. Sometimes the two types crop up together. That was the case a few days before Christmas when I looked out to see [...]