You pull up to the little grocery store in a distinguished area of a small west-Georgia river city, near the country club and a ladies dress shop named after a Confederate novel. There are beautiful old homes here, and old white people of the genteel and eccentric kind that live on mostly in Southern caricature […]
Read moreCommon ground: politics, water, and life.
Checking my email on what is going to be my last full morning in Alabama for a while, I found some very troubling news: fracking may be coming to our beautiful little corner of northeast Iowa. You might say it’s technically not fracking, since the proposed mine in Allamakee County would be for what’s called […]
Read moreMoving home: (re)thinking the organic South.
Sometimes I think “home” in my mobile life has become less a specific place than a kind of place where certain conditions obtain — the sense of comfort, practicality, and freedom that comes from being able to move around on foot and bike as well as car; the ability to eat healthy food that didn’t […]
Read moreSomebody made this: who?
This morning, I took my first-ever pottery class, in the spacious studio in our college’s arts center, with a generous colleague, George, and a large group of students, several of whom had been in my classes before. I’m here on sabbatical, I said, to learn, just like you are. And the relief of being among […]
Read moreFriendship, community, and sensory delight: now on sale.
Just back from an excursion to our local farmers market – amazing that because of travel and what-have-you, this was my first visit to the market this summer. As ever, I had a wonderful time greeting and talking with friends, exchanging local news (when will they replace the bridge on Happy Hollow Road? hope it’s […]
Read moreGiving back to the garden.
It’s been a tough week in our little town, with reminders of how quickly life can change, and how strong the fabric of friendship and love in a community can be, and how precious the threads are that connect us. More than ever it feels necessary to at least try to ask, before proceeding with […]
Read moreGardening in public.
Our little town’s gardening group has been buzzing after two of our members — following a neighbor’s anonymous complaint — were notified recently that they might be in violation of a city ordinance against gardening in the “boulevard,” the strip of grass between sidewalk and curb in front of most houses. The issue: our members’ […]
Read moreRoots.
This stem of Hibiscus mutabilis, a.k.a. Confederate rose, flourishes in a Mason jar on my kitchen counter, ready for repotting. Its mother plant, originally a cutting from my parents’ yard in Alabama, is resprouting too. Last summer I planted a cutting like this in my yard to see whether, as the plant encyclopedia promised, it […]
Read moreAfoot in the world.
Back on the bike for a big day of riding today, the first in too long a time, under a sky so blue it hurt to look at it. This was the kind of sunny, windy April day that has you taking your fleece jacket off, then putting it on again, over and over. On […]
Read moreA world safe for children — really.
In Florida, an unarmed boy with dark brown skin, walking to a convenience store for some candy, is shot by a jittery, self-styled “neighborhood watch” vigilante. The reasoning of the white shooter and his supporters — who erupt all over the Internet and the political sphere, with astonishing malice and vindictiveness — is dismally transparent. […]
Read more