The Sentinel

The oak tree is a sentinel, keeping watch over houses and people spread out below it. The tree has seen many changes. The busy street alongside it was once a dirt track. A farm wagon, a horse and buggy or a rider on horseback occasionally went by. Many other trees surrounded the oak in those […]

Cherokee Poems

Cherokee Poems

   

A Staying Kind of Barn

A Staying Kind of Barn

One spring day many years ago, a farmer decided to build a fine log barn. First, he gathered large stones. He chipped and fitted them together for a firm foundation. The farmer cut many trees, chopped off limbs, and smoothed the trunks. Notch and groove, groove and notch, the logs rose straight and true atop […]

From One Antique to Another

An antique is rare and priceless. It is “desirable because of its age, beauty, and rarity…” An antique represents a previous era in human society; it  is a link with the past. An antique has stood the test of time. It has weathered the storms, held onto life in spite of adversities, and refused to […]

The Unfriendly Woods

This is an excerpt from the latest Ned McNeil cozy, Murder By Moonlight. Usually, Ned enjoyed a walk through autumn woods, but today something went painfully wrong. I sang as I drove, windows rolled down. Ulysses didn’t object, so I took that as a sign of approval. My mind was on the events of the […]

An Uncomfortable Post

This is an un comfortable post because it goes against the popular narrative, the spin that is accepted by busy people, too concerned with real, up to the minute problems to be worried about something that represents a person and an event more than 150 years ago. I could just keep my opinions to myself […]