We called her Mother Smith the plump congenial woman who was housemother in the red brick Antebellum sorority house. As house manager for the sorority I helped her in any number of ways and was privy to much of the business of the house. She was interviewing for a new cook. A neat woman in…

Caroline changed me and rocked me as a baby sat me on the stool in the kitchen, taught me to sing “Deep River” and “When I Grow Too Old to Dream.” She was the best cook ever to pass through a household of women who loved that kitchen. When the banks closed in the thirties…

Today is International Women’s Day and I want to honor a woman I discovered when I was doing historical research for my book(s). Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876, was an historian, commentator, and activist, widely published during her lifetime but now only has a footnote as “the Mother of Sociology.” She was such a “character” I gave…

My Mama always said Addie May was one of her best friends. Mama always looked forward to the prompt knock at her door every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. She and Addie May talked, mostly about my sisters and me. or rather my Mama talked and Addie May cleaned, did laundry and dishes, ironed and cooked.…

When did I first hear it? No memory. It seems to have hung over my childhood like the odor of the Wilson packing plant on a heavy summer evening. Where did I hear it” Not at home, where my Northern family was unfamiliar with its everyday use in my Jim Crow state. So probably at…

In the brown days of the Dust Bowl a family without a home moved into the garage of a house across the street and they had a daughter. A girl to play with in the neighborhood! No more rejection from the boys’ pickup baseball game in the vacant lot or being made to play “nurse”…

Since the novel will probably not be out for several months, I am determined to fill the time and this space with posts I hope you will find of interest. Some will be commentary, some essay and some poetry. This is Black History Month so I am going to begin with posting from time to…

Writing in the time of COVID19. If you have visited this site in the last seven years, you know it has lain dormant. The impetuous for refreshing it echoes what I wrote almost twenty years ago when it first launched. I finally found a publisher. The pandemic is the cause of it all. In February…