ICE Came to Take Their Neighbor. They Said No.The New York Times, 5 August 2019
Residents of a quiet working-class neighborhood in the Hermitage section of Nashville woke up very early on July 22 to find officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement trying to arrest one of...
View ArticleCountry Music as Melting PotThe New York Times, 9 September 2019
Last spring at the Ryman Auditorium, sitting in the audience for a concert filmed to celebrate the new documentary series by Ken Burns, I couldn’t help but notice that the folks around me didn’t look...
View ArticleTennessee Makes Way for MonarchsThe New York Times, 16 September 2019
A few years ago I started noticing wildflowers blooming beside the highway: ironweed and goldenrod and snakeroot and black-eyed Susan. The first time it happened the sun was in my eyes as I drove west...
View ArticleThe Last HummingbirdThe New York Times, 7 October 2019
From inside my air-conditioned house, the light through my windows looks the way October light is supposed to look — mild, quiet, entirely unlike the thin light of winter or the sparkling light of...
View ArticleWhat if the Real Act of Holiness Is Rest?The New York Times, 21 October 2019
My great-grandmother was a lifelong Baptist who spent the last four decades of her life worshiping with the Methodists because by then there was only one church left in that tiny farming community in...
View ArticleOde to a Dark SeasonThe New York Times, 11 November 2019
This is the month of blank, lowering skies, when the last of the leaves lift and drift away into a drizzly wind. The hardwood trees would normally be bare by mid-November, even in the South, but...
View ArticleWhy I Wear Five Wedding RingsThe New York Times, 25 November 2019
Whenever I’m nervous, I find some sort of amulet to drop into my pocket. A buckeye. A feather molted from a blue jay’s tail. The river rock my middle son always called a “worry stone.” The spent egg...
View ArticleWhat Happened When My Son Asked Santa for a Golden TrumpetThe New York Times,...
It was 1994, a week before Christmas, when my not-quite-3-year-old spied a shopping mall Santa and insisted on paying him another visit. I tried to demur. I tried to deflect. His official Santa visit...
View ArticleAn Open Letter to John LewisThe New York Times, 6 January 2020
Dear Mr. Lewis, I write with a heavy heart. Stage 4 pancreatic cancer is a brutal diagnosis, so it’s no surprise that last Sunday night the internet erupted with anguish as news of your illness became...
View ArticleA Seed in Darkest WinterThe New York Times, 27 January 2020
For most of my adult life, I wore a red coat when the weather got cold. It started when I was 22 and searching for new outerwear during my first winter in Philadelphia. I kept being drawn to a bright...
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