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I’d Be Spotless, Too!
Someone is asleep at the wheel.
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I Left My Heart in Appalachia
I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.
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My Jacksonville to Seattle Odyssey—Part 2
It was really hard saying goodbye to my sister this morning. I don’t know why. It’s not like we’ll lose touch. But it was kind of comforting, knowing she only lived 4 hours away. And I probably won’t see her for a year and a half. So it was hard. Still, off I went, just…
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Sovereign Citizens: The Tip of the Tassel on the Lunatic Fringe
None of us like to pay taxes. But most of us are rational human beings who realize that the nation’s infrastructure can’t be provided for free. If we are stupid enough to break a law, we may not like getting arrested, but we sure appreciate it when an operator is at the other end of…
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The Mysterious Melungeons
There is a group of people in Eastern Tennessee whose ancestry is said to date back in this country to the late 1700’s. At the time there was talk of people who lived in the forests as Indians, but who looked European and spoke a broken form of Elizabethan English. Their descendants are called the…
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Unwanted Legacies: The Shame that is Nathan B. Forrest High School
Here in Jacksonville, Florida, we have a high school named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a confederate general who led the massacre of African American union soldiers at Fort Pillow and was one of the earliest members of the Ku Klux Klan. That school was named based on the recommendations of the Daughters of the Confederacy,…
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Contemplating Trees
Today is Arbor Day. I bet a distressingly small number of people are even aware of that. It is a day to plant trees and appreciate those trees that already exist. Today I’m thinking about the forest and our relationship to it. Many rears ago, I used to vacation in Pisgah National Forest in North…