Featured Archives - Page 11 of 15 - Ellen Morris Prewitt

New Cowboy Boots: A Conversation

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 19, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, LOVE. 8 Comments on New Cowboy Boots: A Conversation

Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the need to buy a pair of new cowboy boots. Every Christmas when I was a little girl, we got a new pair of boots. In lucky years, we got the whole nine yards: turquoise jeans, snap shirt, belt, hat, and the boots. My beloved husband agreed to wedge this shopping trip into an already complicated, whirlwind trip...

Everett’s The Trees

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 12, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation, Writing. 4 Comments on Everett’s The Trees

Percival Everett’s The TREES is the most sarcastic, gut-punchingly funny novel about the Emmett Till lynching. As I type that sentence, I think, What the hell? In the apt words of one of the characters from The Trees, it is, “A sentence I never imagined myself saying.” Very on-brand that this book, which short-listed for the Booker...

Stream of Life

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on December 3, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GOD, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on Stream of Life

The stream of life is out in the country. You can only get to it by driving dirt roads. Then you have to walk a beaten path through pin oaks, pines, and hickories that will roll an ankle if you’re not careful. Just when you’ve given up, the trees open and a sandy-bottomed creek sparkles in the sun. We enter the water, startled by its...

You’re Swimming Streamline

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 26, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, LOVE. 2 Comments on You’re Swimming Streamline

The guests are gone, the washing begun. A wind arrived and blew slashing rain down the streets. The palms shook their heads like Peanuts characters dancing to Linus’s piano. Then the storm, too, passed. Water filled the potholes; for the sake of your suspension, beware the unseen. I, who made no food for Thanksgiving, baked cookies...

The Great Food Debate

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 23, 2022. Posted in Featured, General. 8 Comments on The Great Food Debate

And so it begins, the great food debate. Mashed potatoes or no? Naked green beans or green bean casserole? Mac-n-cheese and, if so, what kind? (I’m not gonna give ink to the dressing or stuffing debate ’cause stuffing isn’t a real food–it’s a cut up mattress found in an abandoned warehouse sprinkled with some Cavender’s.)...

Safe Space, An Error

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 18, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 6 Comments on Safe Space, An Error

We sat around the table at Caritas Village. The time was the early 2010s, the place Memphis. We were in the back room behind the grey folding partition conducting our Memphis School for Servant Leadership Board meeting. We were probably eating chips or brownies or other snacks Board members brought for meetings. As the Board chair reviewed the Parker...

Kill Move Paradise

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 11, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GRIEF, Racism to Reconciliation. 4 Comments on Kill Move Paradise

Usually, I review books in this space. Today, we’re doing something a little different. Because when I was sitting in the audience at the end of Kill Move Paradise, I thought, I have to write about this in the blog. So, today, it’s a play. Hattiloo Theatre My husband and I have been attending Memphis’s Hattiloo Theatre since...

All Saints’ Day

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 6, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, GOD, LOVE, Racism to Reconciliation. 8 Comments on All Saints’ Day

On this All Saints’ Day, as we left the church singing “Oh, when the Saints, go marching in,” I connected with my ancestors. If you’ve read this blog, you realize that’s no mean feat for me. I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my father’s family and their sins. I do not consider them saints. I don’t...

Rain in NOLA

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 5, 2022. Posted in Featured, General. 7 Comments on Rain in NOLA

I zip my pink raincoat up to my chin. Flip on the hood and head out. Rain falls. So common to New Orleans, but missing in action for weeks then months. We’ve had beautiful fall weather, but we glanced at the sky, wary of the dry clouds. At my feet, rain dimples puddles. The toes of my tennis shoes disappear in the runoff. I turn left onto...

Lynching On the Courthouse Lawn

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on November 1, 2022. Posted in Featured, General, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments on Lynching On the Courthouse Lawn

It’s a hard topic to write about, lynching. This stream of violence running through the middle of American history like the great Mississippi flowing down the center of our county is hard to face. But Sherrilyn A. Ifill uses an apt phrase in the introduction to her book, On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st...