This is a reprint of a favorite newspaper column from 2021. – The World Meteorological Association has announced a list of names for this year’s storms. When we ran out of names last year, they supplemented with Greek letters like Eta and Iota. This year, they’ve decided to go ahead and create a second list…
Alligators in the Bay Yes, there are alligators in and around Mobile Bay. They’ve followed kayakers, snatched small pets, and even stalked picnicking couples. Geese at the public duck pond are feathery feasts for the leathery beasts. Tourists find alligators interesting, but locals know their devious side and stay away. Sitting on the beach one…
Hello, darling young friends. You make us giggle when you talk about how old you feel now that you’re 30. Oh, don’t think my mature friends and I are jealous of your youthful status for one minute. I truly hope you enjoy the next twenty years of early morning school alarms and carpool lines. “Grumpy…
There was a mixture of excitement and reverence in the air during the summer of 1976 when my grandfather took me to Huntsville to tour the American Freedom Train, a traveling museum celebrating our nation’s Bicentennial. It was the hottest ticket in America. Crowds stood in line for hours to walk through its 26 cars,…
I’m so excited about America’s Semiquincentennial that I thought I’d revisit a popular old story. (And BTW, I spelled that without looking it up! I’ve had practice — I’ll explain at the bottom of this post). Of all the tear-jerking, laugh-aloud, and deeply personal stories I’ve shared over the years, there’s one that everyone always…
“I’d turn on the radio – we had the best music ever!” This was the response from someone on social media when asked, “If you woke up in the 70’s, what’s the first thing you would do?” Yes, I’m sure many of you reading this weren’t around for the 70’s, and although the 80’s were…
I always dread talking to the phone company because the frustrating series of robot voices and the stream of “push 1,” “push 2,” and “push 1 again” is maddening—not to mention the operators I can barely understand. But I was surprised today by the phone company (or was it God?), who connected me to the…
(But not soon enough) It’s a well known fact that babies arrive faster than books. Also, trans-atlantic barges, molasses in January, watched pots and Christmas morning are all faster than a book publishing project. So that’s where I’ve been lately. Working on a new book! But this time, it’s a children’s book, and it’s far…
From the book, Exploding Hushpuppies Still preschool age and not fully able to understand the implications of seeing a man walk on the moon, I remember more about the overjoyed adults in the room than the actual lunar event. My parents, only in their late 20s, and my uncle, who was visiting, gathered around our…