Welcome to Eclectic offers long-form ruminations on the diverse modern South, education, sustainability, and social justice.

Like, Literally . . . ?
forthcoming February 2026
“I’ve lived in Alabama my whole life – the Bible Belt! – and I’ve heard people call the Bible ‘the word of God’ more times than I can count, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard an ordinary person even mention the Aramaic or Koine Greek languages, the story of the Septuagint, or the work of John Wycliffe and William Tyndale.” (1,608 words)

Egerton, 1974
published January 2025
“As 2024 closed out, I found myself capping off a nearly two-year stretch of vigorous reading with John Egerton’s The Americanization of Dixie from 1974.”

A Legitimate Educational Interest
published August 2024
“The Bible really is an important book, culturally speaking.” (1,497 words)

Tuskegee, Before and After
published April 2024
“Looking at Tuskegee historically rather than demographically or economically, this locale has also provided the setting for a handful of events that have deeply affected our nation.” (1,309 words)

Eerily Prescient but Also Mistaken
published January 2024
“Few people today know who Kevin Phillips was. Were I not a writer who seeks out lesser-known stories from Southern history, I probably wouldn’t either.” (2,186  words)

Mulling over Milligan
published November 2023
“Nearly two years later, the October 5, 2023 headline from National Public Radio stated it cleanly and clearly: ‘Alabama finally has a new congressional map after a lengthy fight.'” (1,361 words)

Three Students, One Film: Just Mercy at EJI
published November 2019
“As we watched, the audience in EJI’s auditorium cheered and wept and let out scattered uh-huhs and that’s-rights throughout the screening.” (1,106 words)

No, it’s here in Alabama. Like Kentucky, but with no ‘Y’
published October 2019
“By the time I started going with my students, Kentuck was neither small nor local. ” (1,763 words)

Feeding the Family
published in four parts in April, May, and September 2019, and March 2020
“The challenge as a parent (and as a person with a long family history of heart attacks) is: I’m fighting a constant battle against the brightly packaged, sugar-added ‘food products’ that were born in laboratories, not in the earth.“

From Legalizing Marijuana to Fishing for Red Snapper
published September 2019
“I noticed immediately after arriving that almost everyone there was in a business suit – me in jeans and a plaid short-sleeve shirt – but I already had a feeling this would be more than a chat among friends. The folks who would talk to us had studied an array of problems we face in Alabama, were not from special interest groups with predetermined agendas, and were there to offer recommendations for solutions to six of our state’s problems.” (1,099 words)

Rubin, Resistance, and the “Rear Guard Action”
published December 2018
“When everything is changing and nothing seems to make sense, asserts [Louis D.] Rubin, look to the writers— novelists and poets, in particular.” (1,390 words)

The Winding Back Roads of Southern History
published August 2018
“In the South, we’ve dealt with difficult matters for our whole history.” (1,051 words)

Field Trips to Nowhere
published April 2018
“I take students on these trips into the Black Belt – which I affectionately and ironically call my ‘field trips to nowhere’ – for two reasons: first, because I didn’t know about this rich history until I was grown up and I want better for them, and second, because of something that William Zinsser wrote in his seminal book On Writing Well: ‘Go with what seems inevitable in your own heritage. Embrace it and it may lead you to eloquence.'” (2,206 words)

Teach.
published December 2016
“The history of the Deep South, with respect to social justice issues, cannot be approached casually, for that can easily lead to something like shell-shock.” (1,406 words)

“Hating Obama”
published July 2016
“Twice in 2008, I stood in the long lines at the Alabama State University polling place to vote for Barack Obama. First in the primary, then again in November. ASU is a historically black university, and many of the neighborhoods surrounding it are majority-black. I had never seen so many people show up to vote— nor have I seen so many since.”

Women, Wages, Work, and Wisdom
published July 2016
“Where, on the national average, women earn 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, in Alabama the female worker is getting just 73 cents.” (1,374 words)

The Old Agrarian-ness of a New Ethos
published May 2016
“However, to write off pro-Southern, anti-industrial ideals as nothing more than paranoid, backward-looking, overly poetic mythmaking is to miss the basis of some important ideas that are buried within all of those heavily dated pronouncements.” (1,962 words)

The Great Many Deep Souths
published September 2015
“All I know at this point in a long period of study and thought is: what the Deep South needs is a massive progressive shift driven by an honest acknowledgment of real problems. That’s it, I have nothing else to declare beyond that.” (1,623 words)

The New Yorker in Tuskegee, 1965
published July 2015
“Fifty years ago this week, The New Yorker ran a lengthy treatment of voting rights struggles in Tuskegee, Alabama with the seriously understated title ‘A Break with Tradition.'”

Education Reform in the Deep South
published in two parts in February and March 2014
“Even though lower national education rankings among Deep Southern states would incline outsiders to believe that we don’t care, we do want our children to have the best start in life, and that includes safe schools that are adequately resourced and led, and staffed with good teachers and other caring professionals. It’s only common sense to say that even supposed opponents of public education, aren’t actually against good public education— they’re just against paying for it.” (1,567 and 1,212 words, respectively)

Chasing Ghosts: Southern Pride
published January 2014
“Chasing Ghosts is not only about finding the bald facts of strands of parents and children that eventually resulted in me. No, for me, being a part of the Deep South is not socio-political; it’s personal.” (1,386 words)

Twitter, Tim Scott, and The Strange Career of Jim Crow
published December 2012
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A Terrible Fisherman’s Summers at the Lake
published August 2012
“Standing on the floating dock and looking down through about eight feet of water at the bottom where they’re swimming, I am sure that the catfish are laughing at me.” (1,056 words)

The Spirit of Booker T.
published April 2012
“When we talk about Booker T. Washington, we have to recognize that these ideas we’re throwing around nowadays aren’t new— Washington had a pragmatic DIY ethic and local consciousness more than a hundred years ago! “

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