Here, there are water towers every half mile.  Some are rounded and painted over in a light blue or green.  Some are relatively kept up, big basins with a carefully fenced walk way and sensible ladders.  Others are the old kind that you see in places like album covers and movies about the rural South.…

I’m a teacher! Kind of. (P.S. Momma: thank you for making me keep this bag.  I don’t care how non-courtroom it is.  At 5:15 in the morning, it makes me happy.) The problem with this is: I just ran my kids diagnostic data into the system tracker today to find out their summer growth goals.…

We’re ravaging the school supplies sections of the SuperWalmart and the Walgreens and the two dollar stores in town.  This morning, I walked the half mile to Our Lady of Victories.  It’s across the road from a cotton field, like every building in Cleveland.  And sitting there in a pew, I was confused and kind…

In the Mississippi Delta, the sun rises low and orange over the foggy corn fields.  The stalks go on forever, flooding up to the trunks of the trees that mark property lines.  You pass tractors parked idly by the highway, aluminum barns rusting in the morning humidity, and the state penitentiary on your left at…

I flew into Nashville, Tennessee from Dallas, TX almost a week ago.  It seems like so much longer.   Two weeks ago, I would have never guessed that I would have met such awe-inspiring people who are my own age.  The people who get stuff done are no longer the older ones, telling us what…