Don’t you hate it when you get to the end of your ballot, and suddenly you’re faced with an unfamiliar constitutional amendment or referendum?

I would say great minds run in pairs, but when it comes to my friend and Great American, Stewart Rodeheaver, that does him a disservice. Simply put, his mind is a couple of laps ahead of mine.

Achoo!!

RING! RING! RING!

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and one year ago, The Blackshear Times asked me to relate my experiences soon after I was diagnosed with lobular carcinoma – a breast cancer that only effects 10-13 percent of patients. 

Down, off the coast of Georgia, on an island called St. Simons, live several of my favorite people. One is named Edward.

What a stupid debate.

I try not to write about whatever all the ponderous political pundits are pontificating about at the time. I am just not a “me too” kind of guy. But, I am going to have to make an exception this week and mention the recent presidential debate. To call it a debacle is being too kind. To the c…

When it happened, I was out-of-town on business, hundreds of miles away. It was a terrible feeling of helplessness.

I’ve pondered and researched for years how our habits drive behavior and how these same habits can form generational practices within the family.  

It is my duty to report to you on the state of the state in which you find yourself. I am talking, of course, about the Great State of Georgia.

Mom life is far from glamorous.

Editor’s note: Final installment of a four-part series.

September is Suicide Prevention and Awareness month so let’s review the numbers – 132 Americans die by suicide each day. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in ages 10-34.

I don’t know about you, but I find the political ads on television these days refreshing. At least we have something to look at beside ads for ambulance-chasing lawyers. (I try to find the silver lining in every cloud.)

I am finally feeling much better. 

I love the outdoors.  

I have a new hero. His name is Richard Woods and he is the state school superintendent of Georgia.

Editor’s note: This is the third installment in a four-part series.

Georgia’s body count matters

Friday night lights FINALLY arrived. Our boys of Fall took the field at home against Brunswick High Friday night and won! Gooooo Bears!

Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a four-part series.

Silence, according to the Oxford Language dictionary, is defined as both a noun: complete absence of sound, and as a verb: to cause to become silent: prohibit or prevent from speaking.  

Remember the Tina Turner hit, “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” In the lyrics, love is referred to as a “second-hand emotion.” That song popped into my head as I watch what is happening to our country.

An autumn morning’s sun was creeping upward while I was snuggled comfortably in bed, my face mashed into the pillow and my floral pink chiffon bedspread pulled to my chin.

Necessity is the mother of invention, and a lot of mothers (and fathers) trying to cope with remote learning see the necessity of inventing something, anything, to improve the experience. Thus were born learning pods.

You longtime loyalists (and you know who you are) will remember the exploits of Sheila the Family Wonderdog in this space. You will also recall Shelia went to Doggie Heaven a few years back where she now enjoys swapping yarns with her pals Lassie, Rin Tin Tin and Old Yeller and chasing squir…

Sometimes it’s a dream from a sweet night’s sleep that brings back the nostalgia of another time, another place or a friend long gone, one who has been relegated to occasional remembrances.

We’re on the final countdown to Baby Gove’s arrival and life for Jeremy and I is a flurry of activity lately. I thought we were doing well moving through that pre-baby to-do list I mentioned in a previous column -— until two weeks ago.

A disgruntled reader recently forwarded the following to me.

It’s a jungle out there and Kandiss Taylor is trying to hack her way through it. We are talking about Georgia’s “jungle primary,” a euphemism for a special election on Nov. 3 to fill the remaining two years of U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s term. Isakson, a Great American of the first rank, chos…

Two decades ago, when I was trying to sell my first book from a 30-page outline, during my time in New York, I received absolutely splendid news. “The secrets of Southern womanhood” had read the outline then made a call to an editor at Random House.

In the days that I was a young girl working in the upper reaches of stock car racing, I had the joyous pleasure of knowing a true, courtly Southern gentleman named Junie Donlavey.

The apocalypse is truly upon us. Somebody has made the decision — I don’t know who, but I know it wasn’t me — that the Georgia-Georgia Tech football game will not be played this year for the first time since 1924. This hallowed event, which dates to 1893, is commonly referred to as “Clean Ol…

Monday marked another first day of school for Pierce County students that was both business as usual and one for the history books.

In these days of discontent and destruction, hate and harangue, we could really use Roy Rogers. And Trigger, his Golden Palomino. Or Dale Evans and Bullet the Wonder Dog, not to mention the Sons of the Pioneers. I believe if we could get this group back, we could find our kinder and gentler selves.

The other day I made cornbread and as I did, I spent time with Mama. She was there by my side as clearly as the times that, as a child, I watched her make it.

If you’re wary of Congress pulling out its credit card one more time, the news this past week was mostly bad. Not all bad, but mostly.

(Excerpt from Jaeden Lincoln’s 2020 Graduation Speech)

For several months, at least six, that inner voice had bugged me on occasion, nudging me to write bestselling Southern author Anne Rivers Siddons.

My ol’ friend Regis Philbin has passed away. 

Perhaps it is because I was raised as a storyteller then trained, through both education and career as a journalist, that I have a deep-seated belief a person is built through generations of kinfolks then painted and decorated through personal experiences.

I could tell by the way the phone jumped straight up when it rang who was on the line. It could be none other than Skeeter Skates, owner of Skeeter Skates Tree Stump Removal and Plow Repair, located in Ryo, Georgia. Yes, phones jump where Skeeter is involved. I do, too.

Somewhere out there on the field Friday evening, there was a little sense of normalcy in a world that is chaotic, at times upside down and often doesn’t make any sense. The Pierce County High School Class of 2020 officially graduated in July — some two months after the originally scheduled date. 

“You know what people don’t talk enough about? MASKS. I wish I knew everyone’s opinions about them.”

Has it really been 24 years since the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Games? Sunday will mark 8,766 days since that dramatic night when Muhammed Ali, hands shaking with palsy, lit the cauldron signifying the beginning of 17 days of Olympic competition and the culmination of years of hard work.

Are there new rock formations we do not know about?

For 25 years, I have had the same doctor. I like her so well that when she moved her practice several years ago about 45 miles south, I followed.

The uncertainties and changes brought on by COVID-19 have created anxiety for many and intensified the anxiety of others.  However, we don’t have to let this anxiety rule over us. By definition, anxiety is the feeling of worry about an eminent event or over something with an uncertain outcom…

The scene: A grocery store aisle, one-way, 6 feet from another human being, masked and looking for any available paper products since toilet tissue seems to be as rare as a singing frog these days. And then, suddenly: