A forgotten novelist is remembered through music
Thomas Stribling won the Pulitzer Prize for a trilogy he wrote about Florence, Alabama. But when I was growing up in the 1960s, no one in Florence spoke of Stribling anymore.
Read more
Surviving a fall in the Colorado high country
Solo climbing in the Rockies violates every rule of mountain safety, particularly on a route I picked myself. But that’s the way I liked to do it, and had done it all my life. What happened on Mt. Yale should have been a cautionary tale, but some things are too good to give up.
Read more
A Chapter 16 writer meditates on the mysterious power of baseball
The Knoxville team was a AA affiliate of the Chicago White Sox, so of course it was called the “Knox Sox.” Its games drew scarcely any fans, and many of those who came seemed lost, like troubled souls stumbling into an empty church—or, like me, simply sitting in the silence, absorbed by the mysteries of the game.
Read more
It was a marriage made under the table
December 16, 2015 Mr. Gooch didn’t have much to say about his inclinations toward matrimony, except to point out the obvious fact that he couldn’t marry both girls. When the solution to the impasse finally appeared, no one could say exactly where it had come from or who had suggested it. It was as though it had been there all along but had only revealed itself when the neighbors’ thinking had matured enough to recognize it.
It was a hard winter, and the horse had lived a long time
June 28, 2010 It was a late winter day in February when Bruce and I were sitting in the Country Boy having lunch. Laura Weaver came in looking for Bruce and told him that it looked like a horse was down over at the Big Farm. Bruce is an old-timer himself, and he knew that people often mistook sleeping horses for sick or dead ones, but he also knew that Laura was a good judge of horses and was not apt to make a mistake. He was calm, but he looked worried.
Read more
Carol Bradley tells the heartbreaking story of that doggie in the window
May 12, 2010 “All dogs matter.” This is the starting point for former Nashville Banner reporter Carol Bradley in her powerful new book about unscrupulous dog breeders, Saving Gracie. She calls puppy mills a “national disgrace” and exposes it as “one of America’s most shameful secrets.” Basing her story on a successful but highly abusive Pennsylvania breeder, Bradley describes in harrowing detail how dogs are abused for profit and how difficult it has been for law enforcement authorities to stop the practice. Bradley will read from her book on May 13 at 5 p.m. in the offices of McNeely Piggott & Fox in Nashville, and on May 15 at Carpe Librum Booksellers in Knoxville at 4 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.
Read more
