mejones

So, I was looking through an old directory on my computer, looking for things I wanted to submit and found this. It was an assignment for a writing class (fiction) at William & Mary… Sometimes I worry about me. The Religion Department Chair I was walking across the sunken garden, minding my own business. I was reviewing The Compromise of 1850 in my head. Was it really the start of the Civil War? I think that the Kansas/Nebraska Act of ‘53 was far more influential. I wonder what... Read Full Story

Last June, a local, young black football star, Tahliek Taliaferro, was shot and killed in my hometown. A young friend traveling in the car with him was seriously injured. Those of you who follow my blog, such as it is, know I live in a sleepy, peaceful little place with a low crime rate. Until recently, people here thought locking your doors at night was a silly thing to do. Until 2008. Tahliek and his friends had been playing basketball at the local high school (the county only has 1... Read Full Story

The Sylvan Echo Online Literary Journal continues to seek submissions for its upcoming issue. We are particularly interested in creative nonfiction, fiction, critical work, and artwork (including photography). Submissions should be sent as rtf or doc attachments to editor@sylvanecho.net. List the genre in your subject line, e.g. Submission: poetry. For complete submission guidelines please visit http://sylvanecho.net/journalblog/submission-guidelines/ Our deadline is March 20, 2009. Read Full Story

So, John had his surgery yesterday. He approached it completely unafraid, his only previous surgical adventure being the extraction of his wisdom teeth. It couldn’t be worse than that, right? Well, an inguinal hernia and wisdom teeth are slightly different on many levels. I mean, I’ve only had three major operations in my life, not including my wisdom teeth, but why listen to me? We drove to the hospital in silence. I surveyed the landscape, noting which local establishments I would no... Read Full Story

I have been a news junkie most of my adult life, following along in a sort of bemused horror. I often wonder how things got to be headlines. Such as…. Lisa Marie Presley gives birth to twin girls (from CNN) or Brad Pitt Snaps Angelina Jolie Breastfeeding for …. (from Fox) Do I care? It wasn’t on CNN when I had babies. Women have babies and breastfeed them everyday. There are so many other things going on in the world, is this really news worthy? I mean really ? World markets are crashing... Read Full Story

Several weeks ago, my daughter, Jamie, brought home a laptop computer for me to look at and fix. It belonged to a coworker. People often ask me computer questions; I used to have a computer maintenance company, long before Geek Squad existed. So, Jamie and I played with this virus-scannerless-played-with-by-young-teens machine that crawled along at a snail’s pace. The temporary Internet files had never been cleaned, nor had any other clean up ever been done. That took several hours. We then... Read Full Story

I promised myself I would not get all political in my blog. But it’s part of who I am. I was steaming before Ms. (Mrs.?) Palin arrived at her podium. “Can I cal you Joe?” NO! He is Senator Biden . The Senator part of the salutation is a term of respect – R-E-S-P-E-C-T that thirty-five years serving the American people has earned Senator Biden. I immediately began to wonder if in any of the six colleges that Sarah Palin went to (to attain a 4yr degree) she addressed her professors by their... Read Full Story

So, it’s been a hectic week. I hit a deer, an eight-point-buck, turned fifty, and survived the Stock Market free fall. None of these happenings were very much fun. Just for the record. And people around me continue to baffle, stymie, me, like most of the human population. Seriously. The first question I was asked, by just about everyone who heard I hit a deer, was – is the deer ok? No, as a matter of fact, he’s not. He ran in front of a car – a big (albeit it fuel efficient) car that was... Read Full Story

At the grocery store recently an elderly black woman was in front of me. She was reading aloud the headlines – something about Barak Obama. “I’m gonna vote for that man!” she said. “What’s he preachin’?” her equally elderly friend replied. “Lawdy, child, that don’t matter. There’s gonna be a black man in the White House and I’m gonna live long enough ta see it. I wish my daddy was alive.” I was troubled by this and I support Obama. He’s my candidate of choice for a myriad of reasons I... Read Full Story

I like to cook. In order to cook a successful meal I have to do lots of other things. By definition (at least according to the OED) cooking is to prepare food by applying heat. Based on that definition I should be able to take a steak, or sausages, or a roast and throw it in the microwave and voila! dinner. Not so. To prepare, say, a boiled dinner, a seemingly very uncomplicated meal, takes considerable necessary preparation that actually starts BEFORE I even go to the grocery store. What... Read Full Story