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Barataria Hauntings

Barataria Imagine yourself on a flat-bottomed boat gliding through the Louisiana swamps of Barataria when you bump a log. Feathering the paddle against the sides of the pirogue, you slow and steer yourself towards the gap in the moss-draped oaks. A rasping causes you to pause. Wrong move. A claw shoots from the murky water, grasping the gunnel. Before...

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THAT’s Creativity?

Creativity is the glue that holds my life together. This week in my creative life, I: re-explored Facebook’s Notes feature published a long, involved blog post put together a new outfit that I liked so much I wore it two days in a row did final edits on an essay before sliding it into the metaphorical drawer for its “out of sight/out...

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A Southern Woman’s Vocational Credo

I come to Deborah Koehn Loyd’s Your Vocational Credo: Practical Steps to Discover Your Unique Purpose (IVP Books, 2015) as a Southern female raised in the 1960s and 70s. The adjectives this statement evokes for me are “stricture,” “judgement,” “demanding.” Peering down the tunnel of time, I see a long line of women staring back at me, frowning....

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What Can I Do: Part 4 (or just one more)

Do you call those without housing “the homeless”? Do you talk about “entitlements”? When someone commits a crime, do you respond with “thugs”? James Deke Pope, who has served on the Community Advisory Board of Memphis’s Africa in April, suggests we pay attention to the language we use and change it if...

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Do You Know New Orleans?

Do you know the French Quarter? St. Louis Cathedral in Jackson Square Do you know it more than Mardis Gras Day? Learning Learning more Learning still Do you know it as a literary place? Faulkner House Books Pirate’s Alley where William Faulkner lived and wrote The city of Tennessee Williams and John Kennedy O’Toole               What...

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Making Paper

You start with scrap paper. In my limited experience, you must be very intentional or scrap paper will turn out grey. So I focused on bright yellow papers and collected the gold foil off Hershey candies. In the service of my latest adventure, I ate a lot of Hershey candies. I’m such a selfless person! I ripped the paper into shreds, whereupon...

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