General Archives - Page 42 of 86 - Ellen Morris Prewitt

The Enduring Legend of the Midnight Gardner

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 22, 2018. Posted in General, LOVE. 6 Comments on The Enduring Legend of the Midnight Gardner

When I left Mississippi, I lost the Midnight Gardner. In the middle of the night, he would arrive. The next morning, on my way to work, when I locked the door behind me, a small brown paper bag with a crumpled neck waited on the hood of my car. Inside the bag tumbled tomatoes. The tomatoes might be a little wormy or spotted with yellow...

Happiness is Coming Soon (Like, really soon)

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 20, 2018. Posted in General, GRIEF, LOVE, Writing. 8 Comments on Happiness is Coming Soon (Like, really soon)

For all of you who’ve been following my tortuous path to publishing a novel, I am pleased to announce that TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE will be released this coming Tuesday, June 26. Full and exciting instructions on how to purchase it will be posted right here on this very blog on Monday. Love to you all, ellen...

Gold Coast Dreaming

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 18, 2018. Posted in General, LOVE. 4 Comments on Gold Coast Dreaming

When Mississippi was dry, my mother drove across the bridge to buy liquor. The bridge was concrete, pockmarked and moss-covered. Below meandered the muddy Pearl, a brown sludge of a river that lazed along until the spring rains came and flooded its banks, a rising loaf of a river that spread through unprotected Jackson. Jackson was the...

Running for Dear Life

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 16, 2018. Posted in General. 4 Comments on Running for Dear Life

The summer I went to camp, it rained every day for eight weeks. I was in the eighth grade. It was my first major camp experience. I’d been to church camp (Baptist and Episcopalian) and Girl Scout camp (in Brandon, Mississippi, where we chased a greased watermelon around the lake), but not to a camp where girls traveled from Puerto Rico to...

The Chick in the Eye Patch

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 14, 2018. Posted in FASHION, General, GOD. 4 Comments on The Chick in the Eye Patch

On the flight to Jerusalem, I watched my Israeli seat mate, a seasoned traveler, do a nifty trick with her contacts, using no water. I followed suit, and two days later I couldn’t see out of my right eye. Of all things, one of the priests on our trip had been an ophthalmologist before taking his orders. “The human eye,” he said, “is the...

A Life of Belhaven Houses

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 11, 2018. Posted in General, LOVE, Writing. 10 Comments on A Life of Belhaven Houses

Last week, I drove through my old Belhaven neighborhood in Jackson, Mississippi, taking photos of the houses I’ve lived in. I spent two periods of my life in the neighborhood: from age 3 years to 12; and again through the decades of the 1980s and ’90s. My life in Belhaven began in a duplex my mother rented when we moved back from...

The Tooting Trolley

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 10, 2018. Posted in General, GRIEF. 2 Comments on The Tooting Trolley

At the foot of the Mud Island bridge runs a trolley. The trolley is painted a happy yellow and green. It toots across the street like a toy. But every day, when the trolley is approaching and the caution arm descending, people veer around the arm and scoot cross the track. This is the level of our collective sophistication: trying to “beat...

I Hear the Mississippi Summer Calling

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on June 3, 2018. Posted in General, LOVE, Racism to Reconciliation. 10 Comments on I Hear the Mississippi Summer Calling

The smell of a Mississippi summer is a dirt and weed smell, hot and bitter and full of insect noises and blaring sunlight and popping grass seeds that scent the air loamy so that your mind wanders to your toes and the dirt below and the small things that crawl inside the cool dark earth. But, in a flash, the blazing sun will bring you back to...

This is Why I Write

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on May 29, 2018. Posted in General, Writing. 8 Comments on This is Why I Write

So, I’m working on an essay about my escaping to the family farm in response to Mississippi’s racial mores that constricted behavior in the 1960s, and I’m using a bull (yep) as the central metaphor, and I’m afraid folks might not get it because the bull is incredibly destructive and he’s the POSITIVE metaphor,...

Podcasting or Hacking Through the Jungle

Written by Ellen Morris Prewitt on May 24, 2018. Posted in General, Writing. 12 Comments on Podcasting or Hacking Through the Jungle

I did it. I recorded the podcast that will accompany the release of TRACKING HAPPINESS: A SOUTHERN CHICKEN ADVENTURE. The podcast, which I’ve named ELLEN’S VERY SOUTHERN VOICE: NOVELS TOLD WRITE, offers an extended version of the novel. Each of the 26 chapters has accompanying commentary with Helpful Train Hints and Fun Chicken...