Faith, Folklore, and Friends

It was a different world. The people living in North Alabama in the late thirties lived simply. Working without ceasing, they had little time or opportunity to keep up with world affairs. When they began hearing talk, sometimes weeks old, about fighting in Europe, about a crazed Nazi killing innocent people, they agreed it was awful, terrible, but it had little to do with them. When the news came that the Japanese had bombed the naval fleet at Pearl Harbor in the Pacific, a place as far removed as the moon to them, they wondered what they would hear next, wondered if this evil could reach their sleepy little river town. Roy Robertson, 28 years old, was content with his life on the small farm. He and Mary Elizabeth Sharp were married in 1939, and he and his young wife were building their future, starting their journey together. He had just finished his spring planting when he was drafted in June 1942. He reported to Fort McClellan, Alabama, for his basic training. A strong ma...

What a way to spend the weekend--listening to stories surrounded by spring on the South's most beautiful campus!

Matthew called him notorious. John referred to his as a bandit. Mark and Luke called him a rioter. Barabbas was an insurrectionary, a terrorist, a murderer, and an all-around nasty fellow. Barabbas, vile, smelly, the riff-raff mothers shielded their children from in public, was what my Grandma would call just low-down, dog mean. It is likely his mother rubbed his soft hair as she suckled him, his smooth skin against her breast, and dreamed about what kind of man he would become. Would her heart leap with happiness as she watched him becoming a young man? Would he give her grandchildren? Would he care for her, providing food and shelter when she was old? Like almost every mother, she would do the best she could with him. It probably never entered her mind that he would be the first person Jesus would die for. There was a Jewish custom that when prisoners were sentenced, Pilate would release one, giving a pardon from death. Maybe someone who the crowd thought was innocent, or one who ...

Every year, American homeowners spend millions attempting to get rid of the dandelions growing on their perfect lawns. Why? Dandelions have culinary and medicinal uses..the roots, blossoms, and leaves all be used to help humankind. Who decided they were a bad thing? O DANDELION, rich and haughty, King of village flowers! Each day is coronation time, You have no humble hours. I like to see you bring a troop To beat the blue-grass spears, To scorn the lawn-mower that would be Like fate’s triumphant shears, Your yellow heads are cut away, It seems your reign is o’er. By noon you raise a sea of stars More golden than before. - Vachel Lindsay Give it up. As long as there is wind and children to blow the feathery puff ball seeds around, the dandelion will win. And God said, "Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds." And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing see...