A journey back to the Whistle Stop Cafe — In my adolescent years, Fannie Flagg was the co-host of WBRC Channel 6’s Morning Show, which did everything you’d expect a local morning show to do, including providing a daily exercise routine and predicting college football games on Fridays. Flagg provided humor, charm, and her main task, which she also…

Allowing music to ease your worried mind — “There’s a reason why we want to keep the requirement that only Christian church members can teach at the college…” While you play the game of finishing this quotation, I’ll fill in some background. I’ve been a professor at Presbyterian College since 1987, and in so many important ways, it’s…

A memoir excursion into the space of my troubling past. — Recently, someone on Medium asked me if I have “white guilt.” One way to respond to this question is that I had nothing to do with being born the way I am. I happen to have “white” skin; I also happen to be half-Jewish and half gentile. But in the…

Until when will we just pretend? — My childhood home state of Alabama is attempting to give Florida a run for its money regarding which one can be the most socially regressive. For instance, just a minute ago I read that a group called “Clean Up Alabama” said this about their attempts to ban books: These books…

And all that must have happened there — Yesterday, as I was driving through the mountains on a less-than-lonely US highway, I heard Outlaw Country singer and DJ Elizabeth Cook talk about driving in Nashville: “Y’all, it’s just a mess.” After appreciating for the millionth time that I was not trying to snake my way through masses of…

Lessons we continue to learn, if we’re lucky — In a story I wrote last week about my guilty conscience and my white privilege, I was asked by a reader to consider how I was still perpetuating that privilege by continuing to refer to the woman who worked for my family by her first name. …

Though being lonesome has its place, too — My brother was born in 1960, and the pop angels must have been listening at least on country radio, for the top of the country chart proclaimed Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” as the #1 song of the year. On the R&B chart, Presley’s comeback from the army song…

And a book to help us stand with the women we love — I can’t say it better than Karla Clifton did here. Jann Wenner, whom I don’t know personally, has a hard time with Rock and Roll masters, meaning he can’t quite contemplate how any female or Black artists could ever climb into his pantheon of R&R gods. Not only that, but…

Reliving moments from an obscure song — “Pull out all the plugs in the switch board of your mind You can be (you and me), we can be free Look into the mirror on the reflection you will find You can be (you and me), we can be free…” Whether you already know this about me or…