She said tetherball, and I immediately felt sorry for her.

October 21, 2009 by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Deep South, education, Everyday, family, language, life, theatre 
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Before I begin the section on Theatre History, for non-majors, I always start the class off by discussing children’s games. I ask them what their favorite games were when they were little, and then I segue from that into the ideas of exaggerated expression, storytelling, being larger than yourself, and then lead them all the way into that post-adolescent Catch-22 of knowing which parent to ask to get permission to do whatever it is the other parent said No to. Because a lot of those ideas are exactly where theatre’s roots lie, at least coming at it from the...

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God had given him one-half of His Own Right Eye.

August 21, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Everyday 
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[I like to pretend I'm writing my memoirs, all of them at the same time, and so this is an excerpt from my second memoir, entitled The Deer in the Road. Feel free to edit, as you go along. Just don't let Amanda know.] On the outside looking in, I had a tragic childhood, I know, I’ve read that…but that’s only the way the story goes. It has a whole different feel, when it's told. The truth is I had a very conventional upbringing, for the most part, and it included a lot of church. I was brought up by a great uncle, who was also...

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I buried probably, like, a million birds as a child.

June 18, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
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I don't know of a southern household that doesn't own a pair of binoculars or have a jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise in the refrigerator. So, this is going to be a disappointing blog, in part, because my house has neither. Ok, well maybe a thimbleful is left of the mayonnaise. Ms. Frankie, the sweetest neighbor I had while growing up, God love her, thought it was because people really liked to look at the birds, that's why they all had binoculars...and that anything other than Blue Plate was sacrilege. She had a pair, herself, but they sat on the mantle after her husband died and...

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That time I was in a Sartre play: part of a memoir, sort of.

June 15, 2009 by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Everyday 
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I'm considering penning a memoir.  I'm serious. I'm sure there's a finer art to it than what I'm putting to paper. No, I know there is as evidenced by PaperGirlMemoir's blog. I enjoy her blog, among several others, those detailing their writing journeys. I suppose she's serving as a "model," though she has a much better, cleaner handle on how to go about writing one than I do. I tend to ramble. (I'm pretending it's my style, so don't say anything). At first, I thought, why on earth would I think anyone wants to read a memoir by me. And then, I...

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One Shel of a good time.

April 17, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: That Which Bears Repeating 
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Diary Day - Friday, October 17, 2008: (so good, I told it twice)

I'd never been to Rolling Fork before. Wasn't sure one could visit a place that was, for all intents and purposes, bent on projecting an image of being in constant motion. At least to those who aren't from the area.

 

But, tonight I found myself squarely in the heart of this almost-ghost of a town...the birthplace of Muddy...

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