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Lift Up Your Voices and Chant
One of my most favorite things about going to church is singing. Whether it's belting out a hymn or the softer sounds of the liturgy, raising my voice in praise to the divine is pure, unadulterated joy.
Gifts That Matter
Every time I pick up my mail these days, I get a half-dozen pleas from non-profits and charities to send money. Unfortunately for them, it was last year that I had the cushy big-corporation management job. This year is going to be different.
[Fly] How to Stock a Bar
If you have a couple of grand in disposable income, stocking a full bar can suck up all of that in a heartbeat. For most of us though, that's pretty unrealistic, and unless you're into the whole dinner-party, entertaining-the-boss scene, the "bar" usually means what our closest friends like to drink. That can mean anything from a six-pack in the fridge and vodka in the freezer, to a bottle of Jack, and some cheap tequila complete with salt for the Margarita glasses.
The Yin and Yang of Health
Photos by Ronni Mott
Needles. The mere word reminds me of my last blood test when a clumsy nurse poked for a vein in my right arm, gave up and poked around some more in the left arm until she hit a vein. Not only was it jaw-clenchingly painful, I had bruises on both arms for two weeks.
[Green Eats] Giants Dominate Organics
If you think the farmer-in-the-dell wearing Birkenstocks and singing "Kum Ba Yah" owns that organic brand you're so fond of, think again. According to "Organic, Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew" (Harcourt, 2006, $25), half of all organic sales come from the largest 2 percent of farms. In other words, the same food industry giants pushing trans-fats and high-fructose corn syrup on an unsuspecting public own many well-known organic brands.
Sexy Side Effects of Seahorse
The world has forever been on the lookout for a good aphrodisiac. Henry Kissinger said it was power and money, which might be your only hope if you look like Kissinger (or The Donald). Isabel Allende said it's words, while Saul Bellow said it was being a writer. Others will swear that the most potent aphrodisiac resides between your ears and in your eyes. Whatever.
The Greatest Connection
It's hard to imagine a country that's been at war for as long as you've been alive, but Sudan, which includes the states of Darfur, has seen almost continuous civil war since 1956, the year I was born.
Love for an Enemy
In America, as elsewhere on the planet, terrorism in the name of religious fundamentalism seems to be humankind's currently unavoidable cause of suffering, providing fertile fields for bigotry, hatred, wars and devastation on a worldwide scale.
Change Is Vital
Lose weight, exercise, quit smoking—no one wants to hear it again. Most of us, especially when we're young and healthy, just ignore the advice. We stopped listening a long time ago, and precious few of us are making any changes in our behavior, at the cost of billions of health-care dollars, not to mention the impact on millions of lives.
Blue Christmas Without You
My extended family is tiny compared to most, and we habitually don't play well together. We live hundreds of miles from one another, and are infrequently inclined to get on airplanes for what could be an unpleasant, if not altogether intolerable (and expensive) holiday excursion. Because of this and myriad other reasons, the holidays aren't particularly my favorite time of year.
Seeing The Music
Cliff Speaks would rather not know where his art will take him. "Halfway through, it could turn to a completely different direction."
[Fly] Holiday Giving: How To Tip
All year long, many of the people who make our lives livable work in relative anonymity: the mail carriers, the garbage people, the newspaper delivery guy. Others—like the folks who do our hair and care for our kids—we see frequently, but could hardly call "intimates." We want to give them a little something extra during the holidays, but what and how much?
Starting Over
Slowly, slowly, the Mississippi Gulf Coast is coming back to life after Katrina's devastation. A year later, the artists of the Coast have banded together, getting to know each other, supporting one another, going around the country doing shows together.
A Boy and His Mailbox
In "Glorious Mail," Mississippi natives J.D. Evermore and co-writer/co-producer Alice Walker tell the story of Cesar Nutley Willingham IV, an antiques dealer, community theater actor and flamboyantly green-eyeshadowed homosexual from Sinnaville, Miss. Willingham's good friend and artist, Kymeleon Cockerham, has given him a special birthday present: a mailbox.
The Y Spirit
Church attendance in the U.S. has remained static for 15 years. Many young people feel disconnected from religion, feeling that traditional churches don't address their real-world concerns.
[Fly] It's The Food
Christmas dinner was the holiday event to be forgotten. Not that my mother wasn't a fabulous cook or that she didn't put out a fine spread. No, it was the event to be forgotten because of everything else that was happening. Forgotten in the awe of a tree that magically appeared on Christmas Eve, replete with silver ornaments for the look of a snow-covered pine; we'd eat our Christmas dinner faster than any other meal of the year so that we could dash back to our treasures by the magic tree.
[Greenstyle] It's Only Natural
When the label says "natural," I assume it's better and safer than other products in the same category. But is it?
The House Intention Bought
"We have an offer on your house," the caller said. If I had been selling my house, that would have been happy news. The problem was that I was renting my house, and an offer meant that I would have to move out at the end of my lease term, a mere 10 months away.
It's About Turnout, Stupid!
Crunching the state's numbers from last week's primaries shows that something is happening in Mississippi. The question is: Will the Obama Effect linger in the state, creating a new political landscape?
Thoreau's Fire
True story: On April 30, 1844, Henry David Thoreau began the fire that eventually burned 300 acres of forest outside his home in Concord, Mass. He was never prosecuted for the act, but his neighbors shunned him for the next year, calling him "woods burner" behind his back.