Tennessee and North Carolina need you in, not out. “Why don’t you come north for the summer?” a friend texts me, he means to be sweet. He sends along a picture of the view from his back window, a charming New England town, a bird house painted to match his…

Anti-LGBTQ legislation and how it hurts every child in our public schools. Sixty four years ago, Farmville, Virginia, became the only place in the nation without public education. When Farmville and Prince Edward County were ordered to comply with the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation ruling, the local school board cut off funding and closed every school in the county. Farmville’s…

Death, dying, and our loved ones — We are driving looking for soup from a grocery she can’t remember the name of in a town that she believes is somewhere south of here. My grandmother will turn 99 in a few months and has been talking about this soup long before I even got into town and…

Fantasy worlds of children trying on futures for size. While traveling down the east coast, we stayed at a hotel in Florida. In the morning I was walking through the parking lot with my coffee and this little girl, probably about seven, was walking along holding car keys in her…

Big corporations are making record profits and my state needs to increase our minimum wage right now. — “You better eat all that.” My friend is admonishing her daughter at the kitchen table, pointing to an omelet. She’s probably said this a thousand times over the years to her children, but the look in her eye today says she’s pretty serious. …

And, Yes, We Know Who is Responsible. The men standing before the cameras in Moore County were sober-faced and serious as they addressed the intentional and targeted attacks on two electric substations the night before. …

Stevie Brooks finds community in the place she already was — Shelby is like a lot of small towns in North Carolina– a sweet tree lined downtown with small shops, twinkling light bulbs on the old theater marquee, the smell of hickory and pork from Bridge’s Barbeque Lodge hanging in the air. Nestled into the Foothills, it’s idyllic here — rolling…

Parenting, work, chess — I have walked through this quiet house, bare feet on wooden floors, feathers as bookmarks, cobwebs in high shadows, 4745 times. Mothers can calculate our routines like that. It’s late and my son is in bed and I am closing my laptop, pouring the last inches of water out of…

This past summer, I was headed to a friend’s family BBQ, sitting shotgun with a bowl of potato salad in my lap. He was giving me the rundown on who would be there: His cousin who just returned from a mysterious weekend trip to Ottawa that turned into three years…