A Deep Southern, Diversified & Re-Imagined Recap of 2025
2025 was a year that settled in nicely for this middle-aged writer, editor, and teacher. After the release of Faith. Virtue. Wisdom. in October 2023, I have had no full-length project that I was working on, just shorter works like book reviews and poems. I kicked significant effort into the Dirty Boots column in the summer, even making a brief attempt at going on Substack. Nobody’s Home has been moving steadily along. My job at the college has also settled in, and I returned to the English faculty full-time. It has been another relatively quiet but still active year. Now, as 2025 comes to a close, here is a recap of what has been published on the blog (and a few things on Nobody’s Home) this year:
Posts
The Work (as 2025 Winds Down) (December)
The Whitehurst Case, 50 Years Later (December)
A Quick Tribute to to “Hatchet-Face” Kim McGuire (December)
Dirty Boots: Y’all come back now, y’hear? (November)
Throwback Thursday: Sherman’s March, 40 Years Later (November)
A Deep Southern Throwback Thursday: The “Monkey Act,” 1995 (November)
Dirty Boots: Honoring bell hooks (September)
Throwback Thursday: The Textbook Squabble, ’80s Style (September)
Dirty Boots: The Books in Classrooms (September)
A Quick Tribute to RL Burnside, Gone Twenty Years Now (September)
Dirty Boots: Parking a Bicycle Straight (August)
Dirty Boots: Community and Politics (August)
A Quick Tribute to “Junkyard Sal” June Mack (August)
Forthcoming in Nobody’s Home— Two New Works! (July)
Reflecting on the Village Writing Project’s Summer Institute (July)
The Open Submissions Period for Nobody’s Home ends today. (June)
A Deep Southern Throwback Thursday: Alabama Forum, 1981 – 2002 (June)
A Quick Tribute to Severn Darden, Character Actor (May)
Sharing the Good Stuff: “Where Politics is Still Possible” in Commonweal (May)
The Author’s Expo-sium, May 10 (May)
Fifteen Years of Unapologetically Eclectic Pack Mule-ing (April)
Dirty Boots: In Praise of Old Movies (April)
The Open Submissions Period for Nobody’s Home (April)
Sharing the Good Stuff: Barack Obama at Hamilton College (April)
A Quick Tribute to “Big Bear” RG Armstrong (April)
The Open Submissions Period for Nobody’s Home begins in a month! (March)
Sharing the Good Stuff: “Our Towns” on PBS News Hour (March)
The Passing of Clark Walker (March)
Education for Good: Women’s History Month (March)
Education for Good: Black History Month (January)
Dirty Boots: The Grandma in the Louisiana KFC, continued (January)
Egerton, 1974 (January)
Education for Good: National History Day (January)
Sharing the Good Stuff: “Seeking Common Ground” on NPR (January)
Dirty Boots: The Grandma in the Louisiana KFC (January)
and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home:
A Road Trip, East: Highway 14 (November)
A Road Trip, Southeast: Russell County, Alabama (April)
Reading
My review of Southern Bred by Charles Ghigna
Earnest Occupations by Richard Hague
Smokehole by Martin Shaw
My review of The Year in Review 2024 by Out Loud Huntsville
and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home:
In Search of the Silent South by Morton Sosna (1977)
Watching
A Last Word on the Great Watchlist Purges, 2020 – 2025 (October)
Watching: A Warehouse on Tchoupitoulas Street (2001) (August)
The Watchlist Still Lives! (The Great Watchlist Purges, January 2025)
and published in “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog for Nobody’s Home:
Review: Angel Heart (1987) (October)
Review: A House on the Bayou (2021) (June)
Southern Movies
Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
Foster Dickson 