Poetry & Musings

Thoughts on My Writing Process

Everyone always asks if I write every day. The answer is yes – and no. If I’m composing, I write about an hour and a half to two hours and certainly try to do it every day. If you could write a book as quickly and easily as you read it, we would be more…

Where Jim Crow Went

I knew he was black before I ever saw him at the IHop with his white buddies. I knew, not from some jargon or accent formed in the heat of the Delta but from his deep, resonant, soul laugh— survivor of water, manacles and whips. They sat assessing teams, statistics and the possibility of season…

Remembering Ralph Ellison

His hometown decided to honor him at last. We had grown up six blocks from each other but all those people who lived south of Tenth Street were like ghosts to me. The opposite of vampires, they appeared to do yard work, clean houses, wash the cars or cook during daylight hours. Then faded into…

Visible Man

Remembering Ralph Ellison His hometown decided to honor him at last. We had grown up six blocks from each other but all those people who lived south of Tenth Street were like ghosts to me. The opposite of vampires, they appeared to do yard work, clean houses, wash the cars or cook during daylight hours.…

Booker

We shared a name. I acquired mine with a husband. His mother gave him his. He rejected it in favor of Washington just the way his father had rejected him. But what of the mother? It was not the name of the man who owned her and I can speak from experience, you don’t name…

Update

Friends, I haven’t posted in a while because I have been deep into the publishing world. I am delighted to report I am working on galleys for the new book and have a lovely cover for it. That’s real progress!. This is a little like having a baby. It just takes whatever time it takes,…

Bunkhouse

The last summer my husband spent on the family ranch he was eight years old. An old black and white photograph shows him tossing a small lariat in an attempt to snag the back hoof of a calf. Smiling at his boyish efforts, George, the ranch foreman, stands against the fence. Wearing a stained Stetson,…

A Will Dated 1816

Why did Jane, Judith and Lucy remain in Kentucky three years before they were able to return to Virginia? Letters, archived in Richmond tell the backstory like a movie. The young women left with their widowed father to join an uncle in business in the neighboring state. No more than settled, the father inconveniently and…

Eyes on the Prize Fight

They fought their way into our minds while we were unaware of anything except cheering for our side. First there was Jack Johnson or the Galveston Gorilla as an unforgiving press called him. He moved the Heavyweight from White to Black only to defend reality a second time until there was no hope for anything…

String

Zee said she knew school time was coming when he brought out the ball of string. He put one end on the tip of her big toe and gently stretched it out until it reached the back of her heel. Then he snipped it off with his penknife and put it in his pocket with…

Lady

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…

Never Before or After in the Courts of Justice

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…