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Camping Out

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by James Wofford

I remember a canvas pup tent pitched in the backyard. And listening to a transistor radio most of the night with my friend David, piping in rock and roll from some AM station in Chicago. After we had reached what we judged to be the goal of staying up all night, we were back inside the house in bed a little after midnight. The ground was hard and it had begun to rain. Read More

by James Wofford
I remember a canvas pup tent pitched in the backyard. And listening to a transistor radio most of the night with my friend David, piping in rock and roll from some AM station in Chicago. After we had reached what we judged to be the goal of staying up all night, we were back inside the house in bed a little after midnight. The ground was hard and it had begun to rain. Read more [...]
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Vegetable Garden

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by James Wofford

This is the face of a man who has not had an easy time of this life, the face of my own people in fact, not many generations back. Scotch Irish Appalachian stock. Clannish, suspicious of outsiders. To him, I am an interloper here, in my Japanese truck. Up from some suburb, the son or grandson of the bankers and speculators who’d starved his people off this land to start with. Read More

by James Wofford
This is the face of a man who has not had an easy time of this life, the face of my own people in fact, not many generations back. Scotch Irish Appalachian stock. Clannish, suspicious of outsiders. To him, I am an interloper here, in my Japanese truck. Up from some suburb, the son or grandson of the bankers and speculators who’d starved his people off this land to start with. Read more [...]
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Memorial Day

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by James Wofford

Along the way, there’s an old church and cemetery where I sometimes stop. For clarity. And to remember. It’s a peaceful place, high and windswept, with gravestones dating back to the Civil War. Read More

by James Wofford
Along the way, there's an old church and cemetery where I sometimes stop. For clarity. And to remember. It's a peaceful place, high and windswept, with gravestones dating back to the Civil War. Read more [...]
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Test Post for WordPress

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by quadminm

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS. Subheading Level 2 You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles. Bullet list item #1 Item with bold emphasis And a link: official WordPress site Step one Step two Step three This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

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Test Post for WordPress

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by quadminm

This is a sample post created to test the basic formatting features of the WordPress CMS. Subheading Level 2 You can use bold text, italic text, and combine both styles. Bullet list item #1 Item with bold emphasis And a link: official WordPress site Step one Step two Step three This content is only for demonstration purposes. Feel free to edit or delete it.

James Wofford

Thanksgiving

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by James Wofford
For me Thanksgiving has always been about the food. I appreciate the family time, especially as I get older and the kids range farther afield. And I do my best to stay grateful, take each day as a blessing. But the food? Most always a slam dunk. And mainly because of my Mother. My Mom was a fabulous cook. About the second week of October my phone would begin to ring and it would be Mom planning the Thanksgiving menu. And, because I am the only other cook in the family, we always planned it together. One of our many bonds, along with a love of books, history, and grandchildren. Well, my children, her grandchildren. Whole turkey or turkey breast? Country ham or spiral sliced? Sauteed haricot verts or long cooked with pork belly? Mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, or stuffing? Yes please. Rolls or cornbread?  And do we need a salad?  My vote was always for salad, mainly because Mom made a simple homemade vinaigrette like no other. And croutons from all that frozen bread cluttering the freezer the last three months.  I’m a run and gun style of cook. Hit the grocery store day before and pull it together on the fly Thanksgiving Day. Fix it in post. For her it was more than a meal, filled with love and unspoken meaning, and menu collaboration and planning was her favorite part. If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage. Another thing about our Thanksgiving - everyone was welcome. One year my daughter had befriended a charming fellow fifth grader. Turned out she and her own mother were living in their car, getting by on peanut butter and the occasional kindness of strangers. The girl was irascibly brilliant, and the mom spoke fluent French and Italian. They ended up moving into our guest bedroom for a while. My bachelor cousin Johnny was always there. Usually just out of rehab. Again. And Dad’s best friend with no family from high school. A widowed neighbor. And… well, whoever had no special place to go on Thanksgiving. Welcome. I’ve Read more [...]
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Halloween Story 2.0

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by James Wofford
When my sister Celine died, mama didn’t make me go to school for two weeks. I was in second grade and Celine in third. Had been in third.  We always did everything together. But between the shock of her passing, and then the funeral...it was all sad and a mystery to me. I’d never known anyone who had died before. I could hear my mother crying every night, and my father not saying anything, just staring off at the television. Everyone just trying to hold it together as best they could I guess. For themselves, and for me. Still hardly believing it had really happened.    One night a week after the funeral there was a really heavy rainstorm. Rain pounded on the roof and tapped on the window panes. I woke up and Celine was standing there beside the bed. Beside our bed. Because we had always slept together. She didn’t say a word, just climbed in with me and put her head on my chest. She wasn’t even wet from the rain, and I could feel her breath as I drifted back off to sleep.  The next night was the same. I woke up and she was standing there. But this time she spoke. “Get up and play with me Jim.” And we played almost the whole night, all the fun games we used to play together. It was so much fun to be with my sister again and laugh and play, just the two of us. And when I woke up the next morning I was barely even tired. Just so happy to know that when we put her in that small coffin and buried it in the ground she hadn’t really died. And she could still come back and be with me at night. We played every night for a while. Sometimes I could hardly believe we didn’t wake our parents, we made so much noise laughing and hiding and chasing each other around the room. It was so much fun, maybe even more fun than before she died. Because the adults didn’t hear anything, and we could play as loud as we wanted. And when I woke the next morning our room was cleaned up, and all the toys put back in their places. Celine Read more [...]
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Food for Thought

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by James Wofford

Ultra Processed Foods, produced by a handful of the world’s largest food conglomerates, are proving to be one of the great drivers of disease, obesity, ill health, and malnutrition in modern society. Read More

by James Wofford
Ultra Processed Foods, produced by a handful of the world's largest food conglomerates, are proving to be one of the great drivers of disease, obesity, ill health, and malnutrition in modern society. Read more [...]
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