We all carry baggage through life—emotional weights from things we’ve done or things done to us. No matter the source, this baggage slows our journey, making us slaves to it. We feel compelled to pick it up and haul it everywhere, in everything we do. I understand why we cling to it. For many, that […]
It was a blustery cold morning as Kitty and Pearl began their walk over to Maudie Pearson’s house. They carried tins full of green collards, black-eyed peas and ham hocks and some cornbread. “This seems like an odd meal to take Miss Maudie,” Pearl said. “It’s News Year’s Day fixin’s,” Kitty said. “If she eats […]
Every Christmas, hundreds of re-enactors gather on the Pennsylvania bank of the Delaware and push replica Durham boats into the black, ice-choked river. They are re-living the night of December 25–26, 1776 — the night George Washington’s ragged army made its desperate gamble to surprise the Hessians at Trenton and, in one audacious stroke, […]
As a five-year-old, I pressed my nose against the Western Auto window and fell in love. There it sat—the shiniest red Radio Flyer wagon I’d ever seen. Its chrome hubcaps practically winked at me, whispering, “Take me home.” At least that’s what my little-kid brain heard. Christmas was simpler then. My friends and I came […]
The Share America Foundation, Inc. recently announced its third 2025 Pearl and Floyd Franks Scholarship winner in LaFayette, Ga. The scholarship honors students excelling in the Appalachian musical arts. Pearl and Floyd Franks were the late parents and former entertainment managers of actor/entertainer Randall Franks, “Officer Randy Goode” from TV’s “In the Heat of the […]
Entertainer Randall Franks (second from right) receives the 2025 Georgia Gospel Country & Bluegrass Association Lifetime Achievement Award from (left) GGCBA Vice President Karen Franks, Co-President Brenda Sinard, and Co-President Wayne Sinard during a ceremony in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. (Photo: Randall Franks Media) The Georgia Gospel Country & Bluegrass Association (GGCBA) has named entertainer Randall […]
As a toddler at Niagara Falls, I was determined to catch one of the huge fish I saw jumping in the churning water below the walkway. I stuck my leg through the railing, then maneuvered my head to follow. In my little mind there was no danger — only the thrill of grabbing that fish. […]
I was twelve the first time I rode the Rotor at Six Flags — that human centrifuge that pins you to the wall, then drops the floor. My friends and I rode it eighteen times in a row, stumbling off each time laughing like lunatics, begging for one more spin. Six years later the same […]
As we draw nearer to the 250th anniversary of American independence, I find myself reflecting on the ancestors who answered the call to arms, ordinary frontiersmen who became heroes in the fight to free the colonies from British rule. My fifth-great-grandfather, Charles Kilgore, was one of five Scotch-Irish brothers who heeded the Revolution’s summons. Born […]
The fiddle has an amazing history in the American experience. It first crossed the Atlantic with European settlers, where violins played the music of both upper classes and common folk, uplifting and entertaining through hard times. Whether in a seated concert with a string quartet or kicking up heels at a cotillion or barn dance, […]
