Mayberry – Small-Town Midwest America

I grew up in Mayberry. Not really, of course. But Yankton, South Dakota was about as close to Mayberry as you could get in the middle of last century. It may still be. None of that is to say that growing up there gave one an advantage. What life has shown me since is my…

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Ageism – Getting Older Ain’t for Sissies Yet Our Humor Belittles Elders

#ageing #ageism #elderly Ageism is something many don’t recognize today as a concern worthy of their time. A reader recently sent me a series of cartoons about elderly people. Each panel poked fun at the commonplace inconveniences or afflictions of old age; i.e. incontinence, forgetfulness, general decrepitude, impotence, diminished libido, ineptitude, etc. The subjects were depicted…

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Powerful, Profound Novel Looks at Racism in America Today

#leonardpittsjr #grantpark #racism Malcolm Toussaint is a haunted man. He was in position to save Martin Luther King from assassination but failed to move fast enough to get the civil rights leader out of harm’s way. Only nineteen years old on that fateful balcony in Memphis in April, 1968. the tragedy lodges in his subconscious.…

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Midwestern Yankee in a Tar Heel State – Part II

I am a Midwesterner by birth. My grandfather homesteaded in South Dakota. Until my dad went off to college, he had never left his native state. My father referred to the northeastern part of the country as the Wicked East. “People out there,” he often said, “line up on one side of the room to…

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Midwestern Yankee in the Tar Heel State – Part I

I moved to Winston-Salem, NC, in December, 1978. Yep. A long time ago by most measures. For guy who grew up in the Midwest, the adjustments to take up residence in the South took some time. For one thing, the countryside was no longer flat. I couldn’t step out onto the back porch early in…

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Toxic Relationships are Painful to Endure

#c0-dependency #toxicrelationship #selfesteem Toxic relationships. In this article, I  refer to one party of a toxic relationship as the toxic person, or TP. He or she is the individual you cannot let into your life without inviting in a lot of anger, resentment, ridicule, hateful harangues, and exasperating evasions. Ever wonder why a certain relationship…

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Honored with First Place Poetry Award in Literary Festival

On the Same Page Literary Festival in West Jefferson, NC, concluded Saturday, September 29th after a session in the Jefferson County Library during which the finalists in the festival poetry, non-fiction and fiction contests read their pieces. I was very pleased that my entry in the poetry contest was awarded first place, even more so…

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Ageism in America is Unconsious and Virulent

Ageism in America is deeply imbedded, largely unconscious and  hardly ever confronted. A reader recently sent me a series of cartoons about elderly people. Each panel poked fun at the commonplace inconveniences or afflictions of old age; i.e. incontinence, forgetfulness, general decrepitude, impotence, diminished libido, ineptitude with new gadgets,  etc. The subjects were depicted in…

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Teaching Was a Year Round Vocation in Small Town Mid-America

#teaching #Yankton #littleleaguebaseball #highschool Teaching was my vocation of choice. Upon entering college, I initially  chose business administration as a major. Somehow I imagined a career where I would rise to become a captain of industry. Never mind that there were no major companies in my hometown of Yankton, SD to give me any inkling…

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