January 1, 2021
by jenniferpuryear
Happy New Year, friends! Here’s a poem/prayer by George Herbert to start the year, either reverent or irreverent – you decide – Bitter-Sweet Ah my dear angry Lord Since those dost love, yet strike; Cast down, yet help afford; Sure I will do the like. I will complain, yet praise; I will bewail, approve: And all my sour-sweet days I will lament, and love. …
November 1, 2020
by jenniferpuryear
Barbara Kingsolver has a new book of poetry out – “How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)”. It is marvelous. Her poems are readable, easy on the ears, honest; they cut to the heart of things. They sometimes feel like hard-won wisdom; they are never smug or self-satisfied. Her poems sound like poems written by a novelist. Words are workaday things that might take you …
May 31, 2020
by jenniferpuryear
We are better than this murder. I’d like to offer two pieces this morning: a heartfelt message from my friend Rick Ewing written on May 29, 2020, when I asked how he was doing, and what he thought; and a heart-wrenching letter written by Sullivan Ballou, Major, 2nd Rhode Island Infantry Regiment, on July 14, 1861…
April 20, 2020
by jenniferpuryear
Good morning, Bacon Neighborhood! I’ve been given permission to share a few journal entries from my friend Jack Barnwell, who has been chronicling his life and our times for many years now. I asked him to share journal entries from April 13 and April 18 because they reflect states of mind that many of us may feel right now, or sometimes: I am not good …
January 8, 2020
by jenniferpuryear
Book Title: The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, The Rough Riders, and The Dawn of the American Century
My former history teacher, Jack Barnwell, stops in at Bacon today to ask: who have we been, we Americans, in world affairs? And – who should be we?
September 4, 2018
by jenniferpuryear
My high school history teacher became a lawyer – since retired. With his PhD in American history, he taught at several colleges (as well as my high school) before pivoting to a more secure profession. Somewhere along the way, he also became a friend. I saw him in Raleigh this weekend while visiting my parents. He and my classmate Lyn and I shared a bottle …
June 14, 2018
by jenniferpuryear
Book Titles: The Mars Room, Educated, Less, You Think It, I’ll Say It, Warlight, Sing Unburied Sing, Varina, Bury What We Cannot Take
I’ve just finished up a year of “Leadership Nashville,” which involved 14-hour days and field trips and a lot of time on the bus with strangers who – thankfully, wonderfully, quickly and sometimes slowly – became friends. In our group of 44: a sparkling news anchor, a beautiful rabbi. An editor of our newspaper and a museum curator. The heads of Metro Nashville Sports Authority, …
February 12, 2017
by jenniferpuryear
Nashville’s robins – thousands of them, locals and visitors – made quite a racket over the last few weeks. They spattered my car every day. They seemed agitated, dawn to dusk – or at least they made me feel agitated. I have never considered myself a robin hater, but my feelings were not as warm and friendly as the weather. “They’re as bad as the cicadas …
June 21, 2015
by jenniferpuryear
We moms and dads do learn a few things along the way, thank goodness. Today’s post features a recent email exchange between two fathers… Jack: Where is your daughter in school? Bill: She’s still a junior in high school but hoping to go to U of Chicago. Jack: Wonderful university! Good luck to her. Almost went to law school there. But in retrospect it is …