Fifteen years ago today, I put up that first post. I had just finished a Surdna Foundation Arts Teacher Fellowship, which I used for the Patchwork project, and had been blogging that year about modern life in Alabama. So, with a phrase from a poem I wrote in 2002 – “pack mule for the new school” – I started my own author website and blog. At that time, in 2010, I considered myself something of a writer and social-justice educator, having taken part in a variety of committees and projects mostly devoted to reviving or sharing the history of the Civil Rights movement. Many of my student projects had also used experiential learning to reveal more about local culture and often-untold stories to a new generation. The idea of being one simple, humble worker in an ongoing movement was what led me to that title. I saw myself then – and still do today – as a relatively unimportant person doing groundwork to create community and achieve social justice. My specialty: helping to create a more vibrant and more public recognition of the South’s actual history and current reality. 

During the 2010s, as this blog got going, the tenor of social-justice work was intensifying nationally but also becoming compartmentalized in my local community. In the 2000s, I had worked mostly among older people (Boomers), who were seeking to enshrine the Civil Rights-era history of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s. Yet, by the mid-2010s, the mantel had been taken up by groups and projects led mostly by younger people (Millennials), who were seeking to “reclaim the narratives.” Less interested in working with a diverse coalition of conscientious friends, these younger activists grounded their vision in identity politics to have female voices telling female stories, black voices telling black stories, LGBTQ voices telling LGBTQ stories, and so on. I had no problems with that approach – in fact, I understood and respected it – but it had real effects on my role in the kinds of social-justice work that I had been doing from my late 20s through my early 40s. The approach of the new generation meant that the attitude toward me as a participant in social-justice projects became: Thank you for what you’ve done up ’til now, middle-aged white guy, but we can do our thing without your involvement.

It took a while – perhaps too long – to recognize and accept that that phase of my career was coming to a close. The first sign was that the once-regular invitations to join committees and other planning efforts stopped coming. A second sign was the tightening of local school system policies for field trips. The procedures had become so stringent (out of fears about injuries and lawsuits) that I could no longer get my students out into the community during the school day. By the mid-2010s, those dual factors severely hampered the work that I had been doing in the 2000s and early 2010s. Then, I felt the impact of the new reality most sharply when, after the release of my book Closed Ranks in November 2018, local social-justice groups showed little to no interest in the story. The Whitehurst Case was a pivotal episode in Montgomery’s history, but the Whitehurst family and I struggled to get people to attend events or read the book. The last of my student projects, Sketches of Newtown, was undertaken just prior to and during the ultra-restrictive months of the COVID-19 quarantine, then it was published in 2021. During the research, writing, and compilation of the monograph, I could tell that, for me, it was the end of an era.

By the early 2020s, my work as a writer and teacher had taken on a markedly different shape. Picking up on the signals meant changing the name of the blog to “Welcome to Eclectic,” since that title better described my work at that point. My interest in the stories of Generation X grew as I moved away from movement-era subjects. The years 2020 and 2021 brought the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2022, after two rough school years, I left my job as a high school teacher to accept a teaching job at a small college. My next book project, which was published in 2023, was not a social-justice story but a historical monograph for our local Catholic school’s sesquicentennial. I haven’t been involved in any organized social-justice projects in quite some time, and many among the elder generations I once worked with have now passed away. 

Recent years have been spent re-imagining my work. During the pandemic years, I created Nobody’s Home and level:deepsouth, though the latter project was short-lived. Nobody’s Home is an online anthology that focuses on beliefs, myths, and narratives in the post-Civil Rights South (since 1970). What I have come to understand from reading critical theory and historical studies is that our actions are often based on what we believe, what truths we embrace in our own (sub)cultures, and what stories we tell ourselves and each other. Nobody’s Home, which proceeds from that understanding, is approaching its fifth anniversary and has more than fifty essays alongside lesson plans and other resources. Here, on the blog, I have been putting effort into the Dirty Boots column, long-form Welcome to Eclectic posts, and the Southern Movies series. Since the fall of 2022, my work as a teacher has shifted from a public (magnet) arts high school, where I taught creative writing and twelfth grade English, to a small liberal arts college, where I have provided writing assistance, led a peer mentoring program, and taught when needed. Through the peer mentoring program, I’ve also become an NASPA Certified Peer Educator trainer. 

With these fifteen years now in the past – a lot has changed between 2010 and 2025 – my beliefs about this state, its culture, the South, and the answers to the problems remain pretty solid. We need change. We need to base our decisions on facts, not myths. And we can only arrive at a better society if we embrace inclusivity and community, allowing contributions from all people of good will. The way I see it, all of us have to live together, so all of us should be involved in the giving, taking, talking, listening, cooperating, compromising, and creating. For now, I’m spending my energies in ways that I believe I can be useful, by serving students as a writer and educator, critiquing narratives in the modern South, and exploring the lives of Generation X in the modern South. As for another full-length book . . . who knows? Maybe.

If somebody were to ask me at this late date, why should I read your blog? The answer remains the same: For an independent perspective. I’m a liberally conservative moderate and a Southern Christian who isn’t Protestant. I am also among a minority of Southerners with a postgraduate level of education. You might also notice that there are no ads here, nor are there required subscriptions to read this blog. All in all, I’m likely to write things you won’t read everywhere else, and I don’t require anyone to pay or to join. That may not be the thing for folks who like single-issue politics with simplified platforms and agendas that rely on heuristics and stereotypes, but it’s the only way that works for me. 

Read More: Books  •  Nonfiction •  Poetry  •  Nobody’s Home