The chorus of the song “Why?” by Tracy Chapman touches on enough serious social issues that I find myself thinking of it on a regular basis, for several years now. Whenever some terrible thing happens that captures one or more news cycles, we never have to wait too long after that for another awful event
Read on »video
People are People (Thoughts on Charlottesville)
From the moment I heard this morning that white supremacists carrying torches surrounded a church last night in Charlottesville, Virginia, I’ve been alternately watching the events unfold on TV, or checking Twitter or news sites to find out the latest developments. (Yes, even when I should have been doing other things, like at a write-in
Read on »A video & picture of me, & more info about Horner Syndrome
Jeff recorded this video of me about a week ago. It’s my introduction to the uncommon condition called Horner Syndrome. I didn’t say anything in my video about the third symptom that’s usually mentioned, an absence of sweating on some areas of the affected side of the face, because unless it’s deep summer or you’re
Read on »Another reason to love Friday Night Lights
Because season four of Friday Night Lights was broadcast on DirecTV before they began showing it on NBC, I’d already seen occasional comments in Entertainment Weekly last winter praising it: yes, some beloved characters are gone or only appear in a few episodes, but you’ll soon love these new characters, too. I clearly remember a
Read on »“Every Southern belle is a Mississippi queen…”
When I was about 19 – nearly so, or just-turned 19 – I went with my roommate Janis to New York City for the first time. We drove to Connecticut, and then took a train into the city. I still remember stepping out of Grand Central Station and onto the sidewalk, and into that feeling
Read on »Belated post-Patty Griffin show post
FINALLY posting about the Patty Griffin concert that Jeff and I were lucky enough to attend exactly one week ago, in Lawrence, Kansas. Patty was amazing. Her voice in concert is fantastic, very much like what you hear on her CDs. The “second billed artist,” not really an opening act because he played most of
Read on »New video of PaPa and Kyle, set to Eva Cassidy
On the morning of Sept. 19, 2008, in the emergency room, my father-in-law lay gravely ill and unresponsive. With Grandma and Stacy, I listened to the doctor explain PaPa’s status and the tests they were doing, what they’d found up to that point. Just before I stepped out of the room, I said to the
Read on »South Carolina’s “governor” / How I love Eva Cassidy
Two completely unrelated topics, just what I was thinking about earlier, during my lunch break. First, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina hasn’t resigned yet. I just read a story on The Washington Post‘s website that quotes Sanford as saying he intends to remain governor until the end of his term – another 18 months.
Read on »You’ve got to hear this …
… if you haven’t already, as the different versions on YouTube have been viewed several million times. Take seven or eight minutes to just watch and listen to this, it will make your day! © All the parts of my life.
Read on »Obama uses “the L-word”: Libraries
I happened to click on a headline that said President-Elect Obama had made his most specific statements to date about how he hopes to stimulate the economy. The article, “Obama sketches out recovery plan,” was in CNN’s Money section. One of the five main goals: “modernize classrooms, labs and libraries.” (There was also “rebuild crumbling
Read on »