Something About Nothing, or, Some Things About No Things

Clinton, South Carolina, Tuesday, February 14, 2017, 11:45 a.m. It’s closing in on noon, and my chief accomplishment is half-watching Polly Bergen play the first woman president in a movie made in 1964. Also, I prepared and consumed breakfast, and delved deeply into the latest doings of Twitter and Facebook. As is the case 99 …

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Lord, Coach Lombardi, What Have You Done?

Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, February 4, 2017, 9:43 a.m. The weather has cooled, though it’s still a poor excuse for winter. I just got through playing “Facebook Friends” on my Pawless guitar. Earlier this morning, I wished a few of them – the Facebook friends, not Pawless guitars -- happy birthday. I had almost exactly …

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You Can Hear the Music Burning Down Copperhead Road

Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 30, 2017, 6:59 p.m. It was about ten years ago, at Robert’s Western World in Nashville, where I was working on a chapter of a book called True to the Roots: Americana Music Revealed, and the subject of the chapter was Jesse Lee Jones, who owned Robert’s. I was sitting …

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Things Could Be Worse, but It Takes Imagination

Clinton, South Carolina, Monday, January 16, 2017, 9:52 a.m. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I write. On Inauguration Day, I shall write. Other than that, the bookends of the weekdays have nothing in common. Writing must be the tie that binds. Writing must be the salvation of sanity. I must find comfort in writing. …

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The Old Snow Days Just Ain’t What They Used to Be

Clinton, South Carolina, Saturday, January 7, 2017, 10:28 a.m. The snow hasn’t completely covered the grass I probably should have cut one more time before it stopped growing. It fell in hits and misses, and here it mainly swung and missed. It’s fallen in greater amounts most everywhere else, and TV tells me that one …

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