All Posts

President Trump put it all too well – “It’s a very scary time for young men in America.” And he’s right. He’s so right. How frightening it must be to know that you could be sitting there at a party, chilling with your best buds, having a large time, and then, the next thing you know, some 20 or 30 years later, that errant hug, friendly wrestling match or slipping kiss will turn out to have offended someone. Go figure. And it is a scary thing to know that you could be on the t

Since Friday, I've been thinking about the premiere of Downton Abbey. As Masterpiece Theater classic television goes, it is the best of high period drama. It is also one of my guilty indulgences. When I watch it, I sometimes think of what it would be like to be Elizabeth McGovern's character and live out my days leisurely with servants to do all of the things I scream at my kids to do. I imagine dressing for a dinner that someone else cooks, on dishes I’ll never have to wash

Last Sunday was soup beans and cornbread night in our house. It was 60s out in May in the South, so it was soup weather. And what good is soup without cornbread, right? There was a time when I wasn't exactly proud of telling anyone that we regularly ate soup beans. I mean it is a reminder of my family’s poor upbringing. It’s rural Kentucky food. It’s mountain food. It’s not the food that anyone is going to put on the menu at a fine dining restaurant, but everyone has seen on

Right now, my youngest son is in the kitchen making his first solo batch of brownies. How cool is that? Remember when it was cool to lick the bowl as a kid, and how much you looked forward to your mom giving you the spoon? As a mom, I got to the point where I looked forward to being able to give my kids the spoon when I got done making home made brownies or cookies. It was kind of cool to see them get all excited about who got the spoon and who got the bowl. It made me feel l

So, when you move to the Upstate of South Carolina, one of the first things you learn is that the Confederacy was born and died right next door in Abbeville County. Jefferson Davis signed the Articles of the Confederacy during a meeting at the Burt-Starke House in the city of Abbeville, county seat of Abbeville Five years later, when the War of Northern Aggression (seriously, that’s what some call it STILL) came to a close, Confederate troops ran through Anderson with the Con