After being up until beyond 3:00 a.m. the night before, Sandra and I resumed work first thing last Saturday morning. This was in an effort to complete the final touches necessary for finishing a large order for T-shirts that she’d received the previous week.

A couple of years ago, Larry and I had our house phone that we’d had since 1974 removed. They say all good things must end, and whether that’s true or not, I was so very ready to part with AT&T. Our relationship had been a rocky one from the very beginning. I hated to give up our phone n…

She’s our beloved aunt but we hadn’t seen her in years. She’d married our Uncle Ray and lived happily ever after with him until he died and left her behind. We went to see them more often when Uncle Ray was still alive, even though it was a long way to their house in South Carolina. After mo…

Appling County is blessed to have some of the finest First Responders in existence. They are dedicated professionals that truly love their job. To the folks who have chosen this profession, it’s much more than just a job. Their courage, resourcefulness, focus, and foresight guide them to be …

I had gone in for graduation clearance in the fall of my senior year when my advisor said to me, “You need to go by the P.E. building and make an appointment to take the swimming test.”

Let’s talk about the Special Purpose Local Sales Tax (SPLOST). The vote to approve the 2024 SPLOST is rapidly approaching and I want to share information with you that will help you to be a more informed voter.

I’ve been teaching English far too long, and I know it because what professionals do to the English language grates on my nerves like nails on a chalk board. Notice, I said professionals. I do not go about town with my red pen to mark up the speech of people on the street. People on their ow…

A brand-new year is upon us, and as responsible Southerners, I can assume that we rang it in judiciously by following all the important traditions (superstitions?). If you chose to party or stay up and watch the ball drop in New York, so be it as long as you ate a good bait of the proper foo…

It seems to have been a whirlwind of a year that is already ending with just a few more days until time to usher in the year 2023. This is the time for many to spend reflecting on the number of things that transpired during the past twelve months, including the perceived good, the bad or the…

Take a nice clean sheet of paper and your favorite pen. Sit at your desk or your kitchen table and prepare to think hard. Bring a hot cup of coffee to help you think. Now make a list of all the people you know who are truly honor-worthy. Need some help? After all, honor is one of those hazy …

The blue, red, green, and orange lights on the tree twinkle, mesmerizing me, and carrying me back, far back to another time and place. The lights on my childhood cedar tree were large by today’s standards, but so was the perfume from the tree itself. The tangy smell of pine in my living room…

Luke 2

The week’s opinion is one that has, to this point, already met with much debate, objection and argument. On Tuesday of last week, by a vote of 61-36, the Senate passed House Bill 8404 or the Respect for Marriage Act. This legislation sponsored by U.S. Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Susan …

As a matter of policy, I don’t do book reviews in this space. If you do one, you are pretty much committed to do them all. If fairness, where do you draw the line?

Since before Halloween, stores have been putting out their Christmas merchandise. Red ribbons and silver bells along with trees of every shape, size, and color wait in the stores to decorate someone’s home. I actually saw a metallic purple tree in Savannah a few weeks ago. It was resplendent…

The little snap of frosty weather came tripping by a couple of weeks ago and froze the rest of my flowers that we hadn’t taken inside. We stored as many as possible in the house beforehand. My son tells me that houseplants make the air healthy; if so, we are in great shape for the winter.

Today my front yard looks like an autumn landscape …. not on a postcard but on a sale paper for leaf blowers and rakes. I prefer to think of it as an advertisement for autumn, my favorite season. Yellow leaves still cling to the silver maple, but the red maple’s leaves are mostly on the grou…

If I sent out a survey to determine how many local folks have had a close encounter with the infamous Surrency ghost of South Georgia or any other ghost for that matter, I’d bet that the results would be quite interesting. I’ve never gone looking for this vaporous being myself, nor do I inte…

If you had the opportunity to speak with a typical Russian family about how the current war with Ukraine has impacted their lives, what would you want to ask them? I may very well have that opportunity in the near future with a family that lives near the Ukrainian border. If you would like t…

Mama cried for a week when she moved away from the Gill Street house. She’d been happy there. Her chickens and turkeys strutted about in their pens in the back yard, clucking and scratching for juicy worms in those pens that Daddy had built for them in his spare time. The huge pecan trees no…

You deserve a government that’s accountable. House Republicans want to deliver that.

Years ago, when the first day of school rolled around as it invariably does, a brand-new group of bright-eyed students sat in their seats waiting for me to start the day. As we filled out the million forms required each year, I strolled about the room answering questions when I could. One yo…

I have met a number of folks recently who migrated from across the Mason-You-Know-What-Line and have settled in the Great State of Georgia. We enjoy each other’s company, but there is a bit of a language barrier. We all speak the same one –  English – but we speak it differently. They talk f…

National Pet Peeve Week is observed the first full week in October and especially on the culminating Sunday, October 9, this year. Pet peeves are things that drive you crazy year-round. My hackles literally stand up when someone calls me Mary, but my name is Mary Ann. Or . . . I answer the p…

Near the end of June, I stood by a table of books in Barnes and Noble in Savannah. “Summer Reading,” proclaimed the sign over the stacks of books. Two ladies standing beside me were perusing the books and conversing, and I suspected that they too were English teachers. I’m told we have that …

Oddly enough, man has been debating the presence of God virtually since the beginning of human existence. Throughout time, individuals ranging from philosophers to historians and scientists have debated the matter of an omnipotent Deity. According to popular Christian teachings, God had no b…

“Now your mother will say I’m crazy when she hears what I’m about to tell you,” said Dr. Al Davis, our new pediatrician. “If you’re hot, then the baby’s hot. Don’t bundle him up in blankets in the middle of July. If you let him eat too much, he’ll get a stomachache. Put him on a schedule.”

Since the Supreme Court’s ruling handed down on Friday of last week, social media and news outlets across America have been ablaze. The most commonly listed headline has been a caption about the fact that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the mostly conservative justices currently seated on…

Exactly twenty-nine days later, I pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s office in downtown Abbeyville. Extracting the ticket and a money order from my purse, I stepped out of the car.  The loose gravel of the parking lot crunched under my sandals as I strode toward the door.  Anger bo…

She was Georgia’s Grand Dame. Our state’s First Lady. A prolific artist. A philanthropist and my muse. She was Betty Foy Sanders, who died on May 29th at the age of 95 after a life well-lived.

(Editor’s note: I wrote this several years ago, but now and again someone asks me to rerun it. Here it is. Most of you didn’t realize I have a shady past.)

It is a readily accepted fact that, unless you reside in some obscure part of the Rockies and are miles away from the mailbox at the end of your driveway, neighbors are just a necessary part of living. There are some that you can honestly live with and others you might prefer to live without…

It is the gift that will keep on giving. And it could not be more rewarding.

On Friday night, May 27, yet another class will don red and black caps and gowns and march across the field in Jimmy Swain Stadium to accept diplomas and become Appling County High School’s newest alumni. Families and friends will sit proudly in the bleachers, waiting to hug and congratulate…

I didn’t want to take her class. It was required for college preparatory students, and even back then I knew that my ticket out of Hazlehurst lay in a college education. I gritted my teeth as I walked in.

I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a joke. An unfunny joke. She has accomplished nothing in her one term in Congress except to be denied assignment to any Congressional committee where the real work is done. That means she has no influence in what passes or doesn’t pass in Congress and is rel…

Last week I was in Hazlehurst in the Walmart parking lot and saw an act that pleased me greatly. A policeman was calmly writing a ticket to a man with no permit parked in a handicapped space. At first I wasn’t certain that’s what he was doing, but when he finished and handed him the ticket, …

Back in 1984 as Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale was preparing to lose bigtime to incumbent president Ronald Reagan, he said something he shouldn’t have said and then tried to clarify his remarks.

A few years ago, I took our lab to the vet, and he told me, “Labs are great dogs, but they don’t develop a brain until they’re two years old.”

Since Spring sashayed into town quite some time ago, I’ve been working steadily and nearly daily in my yard. You might see me on the mower when you drive by the house, and perhaps you wonder about the results of my efforts; they might not be visible from the front of the house. I confess tha…

Great minds run in pairs. I read an interesting opinion piece in the Atlanta newspapers recently about parenting. The author, Beth Collums, has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and experience as a child and family therapist. She is also a parent.

Well, I am going to have to do it again. Upset some people, I mean. But I can’t help it. It has to be done. I must once again extols the virtues of the Great State of Georgia and why it is Number One while the other 49 fight for sloppy seconds.

Last Wednesday, I visited a recuperating friend where we laughed and talked for a good hour. Had I known what was going on back at my house, I wouldn’t have been laughing. If you remember, last Wednesday, quite a storm was forecast for the next day, one with high winds, rain, and thunder. Th…

Linden Longino is a retired Atlanta banker who should have Nobel Peace Prize recipient next to his name. In 1995, Longino started a program in connection with the Carter Center called International Paint Pals, an idea simple, ingenious and oh-so needed – inspire children to promote peace, fr…

Progress is an interesting concept. In my lifetime, we’ve moved from handheld paper fans to air-conditioning. Being cool in South Georgia summers is real progress as far as I’m concerned. The old black phones that once squatted like oversized frogs on tables gave way to portable phones. Back…

Between the pandemic and Putin, it has been a stressful couple of weeks. Thankfully, my readers have come to the rescue. I don’t want to get into a debate with my columnist colleagues but there is no question that my readers are smarter than anybody I’ve ever seen on Jeopardy and sharper tha…

“Did you ever have one of those days, boys? Did you ever have one of those days when nothing was right from morning till night? Did you ever have one of those days?”

You may be interested to know that you reside in a dumper of a place called Georgia. That revelation comes courtesy of TOP Data, a market research company with offices all over the world including Atlanta, the capital city of what they consider to be the 35th worst state in the nation in whi…

My love affair with snow began long ago when I read romantic stories of that white wonder that so entertained children everywhere. As a child, I whined to my parents because it snowed so rarely in Hazlehurst, and I wanted to build a snowman.