Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/thedayandahalflatenewspaper.mp3

or read his story below:

The Day and a Half Late Newspaper This-Just-In Guy Gets Through the Morning

I am behind the Times and learning to love it.

I’ll explain.

Reading the latest newspaper is my lifelong idea of what a learned and informed person does each day. Just sitting quietly alone at home or in a diner, scanning the pulpy textured pages, wiping ink stains onto my sleeve, searching for signs of hope or discovery, looking for a laugh or a tear to rev me up for the day…that’s a routine I would not want to abandon.

Way back, when Birmingham’s daily paper self-destructed and became a jumble of unvetted unedited unproofed words shaken and thrown onto shrunken pages that appear only periodically, my days were disorienting and somewhat content-less. So, I turned to the only still-daily publication I could mostly trust—the New York Times. It arrives each day at my home, usually locate-able in the shrubbery and often dry and crisp, ready to be opened.

To my amazement, often the Times carries more relevant news about Alabama than the News does. Unlike the News, no anonymous snarky comments are allowed or respected, and the Times’ internal editors are its greatest critics and proofreaders. It’s fun to see a paper actively trying to be better each day. It is comforting to know there are actually well-trained and experienced reporters and op-ed writers working away.

But, as with any wonderful change of habit, there are adjustments to be made.

The Times has to wend its way from New York to Birmingham, so through whatever elaborate process that entails, I get the news at least a day late. If this is Tuesday, that means I am reading Sunday evening’s and yesterday morning’s news. I am used to that, but wait!

Unlike the tradition of early delivery  in the wee hours of the morning, the Times carrier arrives as late as 9 a.m., which means I am already on the road to work…so I have to retrieve yesterday’s paper to read during the day, leaving this morning’s paper to be examined tomorrow.

Are you following me?

Basically, I am reading day-and-a-half-late-or-later news, way after it occurs. This leaves me out of step with everybody else. And actually, it is kind of nice.

Getting the news late means that I am basically a historian reviewing the world with some distance and perspective. The Times becomes a kind of daily weekly magazine.

After listening to folks wringing their hands about events over which they have no control, I get to quietly review what really happened through a lens that includes everything I’ve heard that has happened since. How can I explain this?

Since I know all the subsequent happenings  I can read the first reportage with a little more sagacity and perspective. It’s a kind of time-travel. The Times is a Times Capsule, freezing things in place long after they  happen, prepared to be examined by the likes of me. If I time-travel back two days and read the news, I can surprise those around me by predicting what will happen day after tomorrow. Uh, just take my word for it.

Anyhow, thank goodness for the Times. Its delivery to my home helps me maintain a tradition of calmly reviewing the day, after I’ve heard nothing but randomly excitable people repeating what they just read on Twitter or Facebook, what they have just been instructed to think by Fox and Rush.

I need a calming anchor in my day, and this is it

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/southsideprogressivebuffet.mp3

or read his story below: 

Southside Progressive Buffet

Not awake enough to face opening the shop this morning, I take a detour on the way to work and hope for some quiet reading time before showtime begins.

New York Times tucked under my arm, I negotiate with two McDonald’s clerks, finally obtaining a tray complete with paper placemat, icy water, scrambled egg, grits, sausage patty, biscuit, and some packets of substances dyed to look like butter and jelly.

I secure my bottom against the seat of the chair, spread my goodies about me, chastising myself for failing to bring earplugs to stave off the outrageously artless and booming music cut through with the distorted voices of employees making various jumbled announcements.

I say my mantra to reduce the ambient sounds inside my head and go through the ritual of preparing to eat and read.

As I try to ignore the world around me, things begin to catch my eye.

Two tables away, a middle-aged man keeps getting up to cross the room. I follow him with my eyes. He walks to the large trash receptacle, opens it up, bends over to rifle through previous customers’ leavings, retrieves a cup, fills it at the drink dispenser, and returns to his table, talking constantly to no visible person.

I assume he is speaking into one of those ear pod devices, but this turns out not to be the case. His animated conversation is with himself, or with a friend invisible to me.

After a bit, he returns to the trash, digs out the remains of a sandwich and commences to have breakfast.

I try to concentrate on my own breaking of the fast. I read the sordid news of the day. But part of me continues tracking the activities of this unnamed man.

This is not exactly something new to me. Now and again I see pedestrians near my downtown shop, unselfconsciously digging through concrete trash containers to assemble the makings of a decent meal. I long ago learned to keep to myself, just as they are plying their temporary trades by not intruding on my space. It’s a mutual demonstration of respect and manners.

But all this does remind me of the days, decades ago, when my kids and I would tour the drive-throughs of Southside Birmingham, putting together our own special dinners—each getting exactly the right thing. I preferred McDonald’s fries, Captain D’s catfish filet, Burger King’s Whopper Junior, Mac’s One-Stop’s Diet Dr. Pepper. The kids all had their special combinations, too. Once we were satisfied, we’d find a place at Phelan Park or the front porch of our house and dig in. We called it the Southside Progressive Buffet. Life was complete.

At any one moment, several billion people are eating what they can obtain, mostly enjoying their camaraderie or their alone time, doing the best they can do at staving off the encroaching, meandering thing called Activities of Daily Living.

And in silent homage, some of us quietly do our part—tip a little extra, donate something special, support causes that truly assist, pay a little more attention to those whose dignity is just as important as ours

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/thegoodthebetterthebestest.mp3

or read his column below:

The Good the Better and the Bestest

Every day is Tall Tale Day in Mister Reed’s Neighborhood.

I’m talking about all those The Glass Is Half Empty/The Glass Is Half Full stories that I listen to, here on Third Avenue North. These are stories about The City, and they are all a fun and sometimes disturbing mixture of urban mythology, high expectations, observation, low expectations, and a healthy salting of real stuff.

From the Red Clay Diary:

A rough-hewn woman with a tattoo (we’re talking sailor-biker bar type of tattoo, not surburban I-gotta-have-one-because-it’s-IN tattoo) says to me, “I wanted to make sure there’s a place to park Down Here (Down Here being Downtown), cause of the, you know, the stuff.”

Playing naïve, I say, “What do you mean, The Stuff?” and she says, “Well, I don’t want no crackhead jumping me,” to which I reply, “Oh, you must mean the homeless panhandlers—don’t worry about them, they’re harmless…and besides, I’m more scared to walk around in the Galleria parking lot at night than I’ve ever been, walking around Downtown at night.” I just have to rub it in and get my commercial in—quickly, before she disappears.

“Oh, yeah?” she says with interest, then kind of drops the subject, only she’s still in a hurry to hit the road. She only lingers because the shop is so damned fascinating to the uninitiated.

Earlier, a between-flight flight attendant comes into the shop for the first time, beaming ear to ear. After she has stayed a while, she volunteers, “Birmingham is one of my favorite cities!” This is the kind of day when I need to hear something good, so I urge her to say more. “Well, my favorite restaurant in the whole world is here, the streets are clean, the air is nice, the people are REAL friendly, and I feel so safe, walking around and taking the Dart.”

I just soak all this in, because it’s got to tide me over during the next three stories I will hear about how run-down or corrupt or ugly the city is.

I know the “ugly city” is not true, YOU know it’s not true, but it’s almost frightening how many people mouth off about Downtown without actually ever having spent a few hours touring and shopping and eating and just TALKING with people.

Mister Reed’s Neighborhood is either half-full or brimful of goodness, or it’s half-full or brimful of badness. Why is this so? Is it a matter of who’s doing the observing? Are both factoids true simultaneously?

Or should we simply go around, aggressively telling the good, the great, half-full-of-goodness stories, until they become contagious?

Bishop Spong once said that each city is as good or as bad as you expect it to be.

Wonder if he was right

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:  

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/theselfaddressedstampedenvelopetimetraveller.mp3

or read his story:

The Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope Time Traveller

When he was a kid he used to dig into all those little classified ads and small display ads that were everywhere within the magazines and paperback books he read.

Back then, he would send off for anything he could afford and he would order anything that was free because he liked to get things in the mail…he liked to receive packages and envelopes from faraway places…he liked to open those packages and envelopes, never knowing what was inside each of them because by the time they arrived he’d already forgotten what he had ordered.

He enjoyed reading ads that touted services and items he felt he could never afford, and he always kept a mental list of things he would purchase if he suddenly had the means to get anything he wanted, and he even wondered how he would feel if he could purchase any and everything he wanted.

If that were the situation what could he hope for thereafter… what would his dreams be like after he had bought up everything in every ad in every magazine?

As he grew up and passed young adulthood, whizzed by middle age and verged on the edge of ultimate maturity he still liked to dream about those mail-order things he never got when he was a child. He daydreamed about the faraway places he would never travel to.

Now, as an adult, he at last could afford those mail-order items. But where were they?

The ads were no longer the same. The mail-order stuff he could buy now was different, inexplicable, not of his generation and time.

One day he passed by an old junk shop and saw a stack of magazines…the kind of magazines he read when he was oh so young…the magazines that had lurid pulp illustrations on their covers…the magazines that were packed with adventure and fantasy and humor and…ads.

On impulse, he bought those magazines and took them home to dream. A harmless and pleasurable act.

And one day, when he wasn’t really thinking too seriously about what he was doing, he bought some antique penny postcards and started mailing off requests for free things and more information, to the addresses that existed only when he was young, addresses with zone numbers in them, to companies that were so important in their respective communities that they had not needed street addresses—just the name of the city and state, you know. The very act of filling out those postcards was so nostalgic, so natural.

Then, he felt satisfied and drifted back into his memories of childhood and imagined what it would be like to actually receive mail from those long-departed places.

And one day, the packages and envelopes he had ordered started pouring in and he knew at that moment that he was at last in a place where no one could deny him his dreams and fancies…and after that he went about smiling to himself quite a bit more than one actually should smile at himself in times like these

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/televisionreverseimageinterview.mp3

or read his words:

Television Reverse-Image Interview Exists Therefore It Is

 From a long-ago entry in my neverending Red Clay Diary:

So, here I am in a television studio playing the role of Momentarily Interesting Author, so that I can be interviewed so that I can get some free publicity so that maybe somebody will purchase a copy of my latest book.

Everything in a TV studio is one-sided, because reality separates itself from the Show That Must Go On. The cameras and lights and cobwebs and teleprompters and cuecards are all on one side of the room. On the other side is The Show—desks, chairs, heavily-made-up anchors waiting tensely for the commercial to end so that they can re-freeze those smiles that bring in those salaries.

I’m enjoying the spectacle but wondering whether the show would be twice as interesting if the cameras were moved to the Set and turned toward the reality part of the room.

What if the shows were shot vice-versa? Then, you’d see the backs of things: plywood housing Formica surfaces, polished non-carpeted floors nudging up to the frayed carpeting of The Set.

And get this: No living-flesh camera operators! The cameras are being controlled robotically, with no-one shouting orders or telling jokes in the earphones of bored camera operators, like in the early days. No ad-libbing, either.

The show is one extended Cold Read.

The anchors are people who are skilled at reading aloud without stumbling much, people who read well and animatedly without seeming to falter.

I look out the hallway door at mist and fog and green hills beyond the studio.

The reversed cameras would also pick up tiny but fascinating bits of visual material—makeup and mirrors and no-sweat pads resting on chairs, ordinarily out of camera sight.

In real life, the talking heads seem somewhat small and real and vulnerable—not anything like their electronic images. If the camera could capture that, wouldn’t everything we see on TV be a bit sweeter and less threatening?

I don’t know the answer to that—I was asking you!

I do my interview in four minutes and drive to the bookstore, wondering if a talent scout has caught my appearance and decided I’d be just the guy to do a regular show on books and writing, just the guy to influence a bunch of viewers to pull the plug and start reading and writing, instead of staring and writhing on crumb-stained sofas all over the land of viewerville

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/dayofthewalkingbookdead.mp3

or read his words:

DAY OF THE BOOKDEAD

You can spot them immediately, and even though it’s happened a lot for the past several decades, you can’t help but avert your eyes at first, because it’s so painful.

I’m talking about the occasional appearance in the Museum of Fond Memories of those who walk among us as The Bookdead.

Their Look is always the same, and they frequently are in the company of book fans.

When the Bookdead person enters the store with the book fan, two things happen simultaneously. The book fan rushes to a favorite category and is lost to view in an instant. The Bookdead person stands in the middle of the aisle, as far away from each bookcase as the body can possibly be, and stares blankly ahead, stares at nothing in particular, stares at the brown wood between the books.

For years, I took as my personal goal the task of proselytizing, trying to show the Bookdead something that would be of interest, something that would spark a light in the eye, a rush of enthusiasm to the brain.

I seldom do that anymore, because it seems more productive to assist the book fan in the quest, the Bookdead being not the least bit interested in learning anything new, not excited at the prospect of having a eureka! experience.

By the time the Bookdead arrive at our doors, they are long gone away, taken from us by the regional pride of having never voluntarily read a book, or spirited away by palm-sized electronic devices, comfortable in the fact that books are somehow effete or geeky or sissy or nerdy or a sure sign that there’s something wrong with you.

I still dream of a day when the unexposed will suddenly shout with joy over the discovery of written words that can entice and excite and stimulate and make more bearable the activities of daily living.

But I realize that prodigals sometimes get way too much attention, ignoring the needs of those of us who love books, so, unbiblical as it may seem, I ignore the festivities celebrating the non-book-reader and concentrate instead on handholding those who want to continue the joyous fall through the looking glass, the fall that makes us see the world and ourselves in new and different and sometimes delightful ways.

Here, take my hand

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/thetruthaboutauthorsandbooks.mp3

or read his story below:

The Truth About Authors and Books and Book Reviewers

As a book reviewer, it’s hard not to cheat.

Some publisher or hopeful author sends me a package of material, including a book, and hopes that something within that package will inspire me to write a review.

Actually, that’s not quite true.

Said publisher or author hopes that I’ll write a favorable review, something that will inspire readers to rush out and purchase the book.

That’s not quite true, either.

Often, said publisher or author wants me to say something that makes people—whether or not they are readers—rush out and purchase the book.

That, too, may not be the whole truth and nuttin’ but.

Said publisher and author would be happy (mostly) if the book became a million-seller, even if nobody read it!

Non-readers often buy books to give to people who accept them but never get around to reading them. Nothing sadder than a stack of unread books.

This is nothing new.

In my rare book emporium, I have lots of century-old books that have never been read. The proof is irrefutable. The unread volumes are full of uncut pages—pages that the publisher has failed to trim so that the book can be fully opened. These unread books are a joy to read, because it’s fun to take a bone letter-opener and slit each page open as the book is read.

It’s a nice romantic notion, the notion that this author’s book lay there for a century before anybody took the trouble to open it. And I am the first to read it!

Anyhow, as I say, it’s hard to refrain from cheating when I receive a book to review. First of all, it may come into my hands because my editor has heard great things about it, or because the author has been annoyingly persistent (this often works, fellow authors!) and I feel I have to review it just to be freed of this person, or the book may be by someone the literary world has deemed godlike—the writer who is good, therefore, everything written by said writer has to be good and don’t you the reviewer be the one to think differently!

And so on.

There are other factors that can influence the unwary reviewer. If you’re in a hurry, you’re tempted to skim the book or just read the jacket or the blurbs or the extensive synopses accompanying the book. Truth is, these synopses are designed to help the lazy reviewer get the job done, or to make sure the reviewer doesn’t miss the point of the book. Heaven forfend, the reviewer should find great meaning in the book that nobody else, including the author, has found!

So, the reviewer has choices. Read the book cover to cover without looking at the cover or the jacket or other reviews or synopses or blurbs, without regard to reputation and track record and age and gender and background.

This is almost impossible to do, so most reviewers don’t do it. But it can be done, fellow reviewer, just in case you are tempted to try it.

Try walking blindfolded up to a table of books-to-be-reviewed, pick the first one your hand touches. Have someone remove the jacket, tape over the title and author information. Then, for once in your life, read a book about which you have no pre-conceived notions.

What do you think would happen?

There are all kinds of possibilities: you might pan a book everybody else loves (your social life will be diminished), you might make inappropriate assumptions about the author (female, male, old, young, experienced, unknown?), you might mistake fiction for autobiography, you might lose a friend (Yipes! I just trashed a book written by someone whose company I cherish!), or, for once in your career, you just might write a review of great integrity, freshness, insight and importance.

You might start a trend.

Probably not

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s podcast: 

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/thetwoshoemorningbegetsthetwostepdance.mp3

or read his story below:

The Two-Shoe Morning Begets the Two-Step Dance

Bob the Groaner rolls himself out of bed and begins searching for his shoes. It is one of those days when things don’t magically proceed as planned in Bob’s perfect-world imagination.

Bob groans, shuffles about, finally finds at least one shoe and, for a mystical moment, decides that maybe today will be a one-shoe day. This turns out not to be such a good idea, what with the limping and the off-centeredness of it all.

Finally, Bob the Groaner locates the other shoe, then contemplates the mystery of why it always takes two shoes to get through the day. This starts him thinking about Things That Come in Twos.

Let’s see, he mumbles, what else will have to come in twos today? Well, there are two socks—it just doesn’t feel right, wearing one. There are two scrambled eggs waiting with two biscuits and two paper napkins at the diner. The parking meter requires two quarters, since when does it take just fifteen minutes to eat breakfast? Two panhandlers double-team him a block apart, each inadvertently reciting the same fake story about getting stranded with no gas and needing to get back to either Jasper or Gadsden—the cities are always interchangeable.

Bob sneezes once, then again, and realizes that it’s almost impossible to sneeze just once. There now, all better.

Two ambulances whiz past, going in opposite directions—this seems vaguely counter-productive to Bob.

The salesclerk at CVS asks him for his CVS card twice, forgetting that she’s already asked him once. Later, a customer enters his shop. He says, “Good morning, how are you doing?” She says, “I’m fine, how are you?” He says, “Fine.” She says “Good. How are you?” Is anybody paying attention here? he wonders.

Just before he turns the CD player on, he automatically says, “Ah one and ah two…” An old Lawrence Welk/Stan Freberg gag that only he understands.

Reviewing his morning thus far, Bob contemplates the routines that get him up and going, and all the mindless habits that are taken for granted. Does he remember to place the right shoe on the right foot and the left shoe on the left foot? Don’t have to remember, he thinks, I just do it. Thank goodness I don’t have to figure that out from scratch each and every day.

Many decades earlier, when young, Bob has to learn to dance in order to make himself presentable at a school function. Slow dancing is imperative if he wants to get really close to a girl, so his friend Pat tries to teach him how to do the Box Step. Being a clumsy sort, he finds that too complicated. So Pat teaches him the Two Step, commenting that even a moron can do the Two Step. Pat is right, and Bob the Groaner for once does not groan during the dance—he just grins ear to ear and inhales the lovely perfumed fragrance of his date.

Life comes in twos, Bob thinks that evening. You’re born, you pass. Stuff happens in between, often in twos. You may be a two-time loser. You may be a two-timer. You may be two-faced.

As he prepares for bed this evening, he carefully places his shoes where he can easily find them, thus avoiding the serial two-thinking thoughts that distract him from his duties.

Tomorrow, something else could trigger Bob’s stream of consciousness. Maybe he’ll start thinking about Threes…three meals a day, three little pigs, the Trinity, three sheets to the wind, The Three Amigos…

Bob the Groaner groans, then smiles his goofy smile and snuggles deep into his pillow, to sleep the sleep of someone who, though off-center, at least knows how to entertain himself

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to Jim’s Podcast:

http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/itismannerstoissueastatement.mp3

or read on…

IT IS MANNERS TO ISSUE A STATEMENT AS TO WHAT I GOT OUT OF IT ALL

Now that I have your attention, it seems appropriate to inform you as to why I called you here in the first place.

I just realized that I as a writer have this magical ability to look before and after.

Apparently, humans may be the only animals able to do this.

The curse of being human is that I can imagine things that are not, never were and never will be. I can magnify and endlessly repeat in my imagination events that happened or did not happen, to my heart’s content. I can conjure up soothing thoughts to carry myself through harsh times. I can toss and turn and fret over things that have no significance to anyone else.

You and I are the Dreaming Animals. And our species may be alone in this ability to dream up or magnify stuff.

As the Dreaming Animal, what have I learned from life that seems to be true and wise?

1. I am travelling forward through time and cannot go back for even one minute and re-live any of what has passed. As the Dreaming Animal, I can pretend to do this. And that can be fun. And useful.

2. I am hopelessly trapped inside a pink body bag—my skin—and will spend the rest of my time incarcerated therein. As the Dreaming Animal, I can play-like this is not the case.

3. I am not in control of my destiny, whatever that is. DNA will determine my limitations. Environment will take cold and uncalculated action whether I want it to or not.

4. I am the sum total of a thousand gaffs, errors, omissions, and impulsive acts. I cannot make corrections, though here and there, I can take the opportunity to apologize for offences enacted. I have reasons for all my mistakes, but I have no excuses worthy of entertaining.

5.  I have ingested countless joys and eureka moments, countless epiphanies and realizations, countless insights and discoveries. I am grateful for these happenings and cherish them mightily.

6. I have learned that, to survive knowledge of the world’s wrongs and horrors and calamities and monstrous injustices, I must do what I can, then distract myself just enough to maintain sanity and purpose. If I do not find some exhilaration each day to control the Negatives, I won’t find the energy to do what good I can do.

That’s about it for now. I’m so happy you responded to my call and gathered to listen.

Maybe you can filch a thought or two for your own purposes. Maybe you can share a thought or two to assist me in my journey.

Let’s be Dreaming Animals together and make the most of what good there is left to do in a crazed but beautiful world

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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Listen to today’s podcast:

 http://redclaydiary.com/mp3/waybackwhenweknewmore.mp3

or read Jim’s story below:

Way Back When We Knew More Than We Know Now

I go fishing for books now and then. I just rev up the old bookmobile, pop open what we down here call a Soft Drink, turn on the radio, and head Thataway, never knowing what adventures will impose themselves upon me.

My routine treks among the hilly byways of rural Alabama give me time to ponder and think and reminisce and wonder.

Sometimes, I have to switch the radio off to clear my head, especially when I hear just one too many grating grammar errors. The NPR announcer says, ”The price of cigarettes have gone up.”

Is she aware that she have made a grammatical error?

Another public radio announcer constantly refers to somebody called Utha Listener, never once explaining who Utha might be.

Yet another voice pontificates, “They have just showed up.”

She’s never been showed how to use shown correctly.

I go through a train crossing, noticing that some railroad cars do not have graffiti coating their sides. Somebody has fallen down on the job.

Howlin’ Wolf’s song pops into memory and makes me forget the errors and typos of the world around me and just feel some joy for a moment, “My baby she’s a good-looking thing you know…she’s the one who spins me round and round, one who turns me upside down” Now, that’s Love!

I pass town water towers that look somewhat like the steel-legged robots H.G. Wells imagined filled with invading Martians. I recall that I have actually seen one of these mechanisms, a tall shiny facsimile in the town square at Woking, England, near where the attackers landed.

Cruising past strip malls, I observe many women and men and children getting out of their cars, parents elaborately extracting squirming kids from car seats, lifting the ones who still like to be lifted and grumbling back at grumbling kids who like to grumble.

It’s fun to pay attention. So many people I see are not watching, not looking around to see what’s what. What thrills they are missing!

Every image, each person, seems to be about me, about my life. It’s impossible to close them out, difficult to forget them.

My fishing day is fruitful. I gather some special books here and there, hear sounds that make me cringe and smile, see faces and shadows that awaken my empathic senses, and get to look behind things to see what I might be missing.

There are probably worse ways to spend a morning in the gossipy and secretive hills of sweet Alabama

© Jim Reed 2015 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

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