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Beignets, Names, and Future Wins

Today, we took our grandsons to the cafe au lait and beignets place. Inside the place, I mean. Except for one, two times, I haven’t been inside a restaurant for 12 months. We ordered three plates of beignets and one croissant because it was an after-school snack, and the beignets might not have been sufficient, thus the...

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The Gifted Young Professional

In the summer of 1981, when I was clerking at the Wise Carter law firm in Jackson, Mississippi, and living at my grandmother’s house, I walked the five blocks to my job in downtown Jackson. Pedestrian commuting was not the rule in Jackson, but my other option was to drive Bigmama’s 1965 land shark Cadillac, fondly known as “Big Blue.“ At that...

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Ha, ha! My Own Purple Martin House!

Generations ago, the Morris family became hosts for Purple Martins. When the ladies and gents of the Purple Martin family would travel through Jackson, Mississippi, on their way from South America to the eastern United States, they always stopped over at the Morris Ice Company. Grandaddy Morris made sure of that. He put up houses for the...

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Yay!!!

The temperature dropped to 26 degrees. In New Orleans. But our pipes didn’t burst. The sun came out. Yes, it took its own sweet time, but by 2:00, the sky was blue. The kids came over. They, as a group, were dangerous insects. (Think thorn bug and dung beetle plus two more). I, as David Bowie’s Major Tom, handed out Space...

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I Love You

I see you looking at my mask with disdain. You think I’m a coward, afraid of getting a virus that is no worse than the flu. One that probably doesn’t even exist, anyway. And if it does, masks sure don’t work. I’m just being a sucker.  I envy you the freedom to believe that way. I’m jealous of your luxury of theory because you’ve known...

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If We Don’t Know about Racism, Maybe it’s Our Own Fault

The Public Defender broke the news: the DA was dismissing the charges against my friend. We were seated in his office, a small, square space with a desk and chair and not much else. I was there in my year-long wade through racism and incompetence in support of my friend. A white woman had claimed—three months after the fact—he had stolen her...

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When Your President Can Do No Wrong

The dry cleaners my grandparent owned smelled like hot cloth and headache-inducing sizing and musty Town Creek. I could kneel on the floor, squint an eye over a hole, and watch the creek flow beneath downtown Jackson, Mississippi. When I rose, I dusted my dirty palms as the iron sewing machine whirred, stabbing and hemming, mending and...

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