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They had just opened the four-lane divided highway between my hometown and the county seat, some 15 miles away. They had been working on it all my life, and now it was wide open, and I had just gotten my driver’s license. In those days, I drove a 1972
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It was the middle of July in 2016. I had just walked in the door from work. Renee was 11 months out from her heart transplant, and I was running a day shelter I had founded. It had been a particularly bad day. I had a lot of them that
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The church building was small – no more than 1000 square feet all told. My granddaddy’s name is on the cornerstone, along with the date – 1941 – when they built the brick building after the wooden structure that had been built in 1870 would no longer serve, but there was an
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Some years back, I was hanging out in the smoking rea of the day shelter I ran at the time. It was one of my favorite community-building activities – it’s hard to have any agenda in a smoking area, especially if you yourself do not smoke. If you just hung
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Hi Hugh, A friend died, and I want to be helpful to his wife, but I’m not sure what to do. I told her that if she needed anything to let me know. Of course, she thanked me, but it’s been a few days now and she hasn’
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I have written before in these pages about my Aunt Louise. My great aunt, really – Dad’s mom’s sister – she died when I was 12, but until then was one of my biggest influences. She lived on 40 acres, 10 miles from a town of 800 people, and while
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Hi there. Can we talk? I just wanted to check in. For some of you reading this right now, I know the stories about your decision to terminate your pregnancy. I know, because I was the person you called when you were assaulted, and I waited in the ER while
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Since posting my story of burnout, I have had no less than 5 conversations with people in similar places. All people in the so-called helping professions, all doing good work, all exhausted. I used to teach classes on self-care, but if I did it now, I wouldn’t call it
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I wrote most of this in the Before Times. I have not hung out by myself in a diner in almost two years, merely one of a long list of things this pandemic has stolen from me. I miss it tremendously. * * * A few years ago, I was in Baltimore to
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I am a child of the Southland. I love it here, and I grew up here, in a childhood filled with honeysuckle, sweet tea, fishing, lightning bugs and church potlucks. The earliest memories I have involve table fellowship with other folks, of lessons drummed into my head about hospitality and