Rodney, the reigning patriarch of our family, loves sorghum syrup which, in the mountains, is called “soggum syrup.”

During one Sunday-after-church dinner, Louise had made a batch of hot, buttermilk biscuits so when she offered choices of two desserts, Rodney spoke up and said, “I’ll just have soggum syrup and biscuits.”

Dutifully, like the good wife and hostess she is, she went to the pantry, retrieved a jar that had been bought from some mountaineer at a roadside stand somewhere and handed it to him. Read More»

The election of Barack Obama, and his presidency so far, have reminded me of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” a story written in 1837 by Danish author and poet Hans Christian Andersen.

In that story a dishonest pair of weavers took advantage of the vanity of a king who cared for nothing but his wardrobe, telling him and his court that they could weave a fabric so fine it would be invisible to anyone who is unfit for his position or “just hopelessly stupid.”

I’m tempted to digress on a tie-in between “hopelessly stupid” and the voting public, but ... Read More»

Sometimes you can read a book that will change your mind on some fundamental issue. Rarely, however, is there just one page that can undermine or destroy a widely-held belief. But there is such a page — page 77 of the book “Out of Work” by Richard Vedder and Lowell Gallaway. Read More»

Just about the time you’re convinced that your editor doesn’t read your stuff, he chides you for miscrediting a quotation and sends you back to the dictionary. No wonder I sometimes “forget” to copy him when I send my column in.

But a “misassigned” quotation in last week’s Pulitzer-worthy epic about armadillos caught his eye. This is one of those situations in which something is defined not by what it is, but by what it isn’t. Read More»