“Squash it, Mamaw! Squash it!”
Right outside of Mamaw Girdle/Myrtle’s bedroom window was the biggest spider I had seen in the five years of my life. It had a colorful, bulbous body with long black hinged legs. In my child’s mind, it was a hideous monster.
“I’m not going to squash it. It’s a writing spider,” she answered. I was amazed because the only other creature that I knew who could write was Snoopy. I wondered if this was a skill some creatures really had.

I love to drive our roads here in Union County and check out the old barns visible to the road. When I get a chance to investigate an old barn I dive on the opportunity. What I have noticed is that most old barns still standing in East Tennessee were built and used mostly to dry and store tobacco. If the barn was built for something else like livestock, it was usually converted later on to dry tobacco. It is very easy to tell that a barn was used for tobacco.

Sittin’ on my front porch with a strong hangry (new woke terminology) to roll out my Suzuki Burgman and head north to Harrogate, turn south on highway 63. Then ride slowly south through the beautiful (hasn’t been spoiled by so-called development) Powell Valley to I-75 south to exit 122, turn north onto highway 61 and back to my front porch. This fall has been one of the prettiest color displays since the 1960s.

Some time ago a longtime pastor friend from another church was confiding in me about both the highs and lows of leading a congregation. Because of his genuine sadness over the lows, I joked with him that I was going to do a Bible study entitled How to Kill Your Pastor.
My friend, seeing the veiled humor in the concept, shared that thought with another fellow pastor, who quickly responded; “When can he come teach this at my church?”

A popular pastime when my mom was growing up on a Tennessee hillside farm was to go out and find some rabbit tobacco, crush it and roll it up in some brown paper from a poke (that’s a bag to you young folk), and smoke it. I don’t know how the tobacco tasted, but that paper must have been strong!

Have you ever driven to Pigeon Forge or Gatlinburg and stared in awe at the big orange funnel attached to the Wilderness in The Smokies? I sure have! Every time we see that monstrosity of a waterslide, my children ask when we will visit the resort. I kindly remind them that a place like that is not in our budget, but one day we might go.

As the holiday season approaches, bringing with it delicious fall flavors and promises of snowcapped mountain views, many of us are drawing up our gift lists or wish lists. Some of us with little ones have already received our Christmas catalogues from Amazon and Target in the mail, whether we wanted them or not. My children eagerly flipped through the pages of cheaply made toys, circling their favorites and chatting amongst themselves. As I ease dropped on their conversation, I imagined all the money these catalogues bring in for the big box stores.

Dr Matthew Hartsburg’s Olympic dream finally became a reality when he was invited, after waiting several years, to join the medical team caring for Team USA athletes in the recent Beijing winter games.

A licensed chiropractor with a practice in Danbury, Connecticut, in 2017 he began treating athletes at the United States Olympic Training Centers in Colorado Springs, Colorado and Lake Placid, New York.

If you read, “Crying at the Canyon Part 1,” you know my friend was traumatized by her trip to the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately for her, she would be facing another terrifying canyon a few days later.
When my friend and her husband reached their destination in Arizona, she was so excited by the scenery. That evening she called me and told me all about the breathtaking beauty of the desert. Over the years, I have heard other people describe the desert that way. Being an East Tennessee girl who’s used to lush green fields and forested ridgelines, that sounded strange to me.

I grew up poor during the Great Depression. Other than the Bible, I don’t remember seeing a book at our house, not even a newspaper. Yes, Dad did have his pulp Westerns. They would have a glossy bright colored cover. The actual pages were the same as newspaper. They called them pulp fiction books. I couldn’t read them. The words were too big.