It was the spring of 1961.  Senior night for those of us in the Theodore High School class of 1961.  There were skits and music and various and sundry silly things dished out for admiring parents and others. It was the night I learned a lesson I have never forgotten....

Editor's note:  Dana Hall McCain is a columnist for AL.com  She writes about faith, culture, and politics and is a member of the 2020 Leadership Council for the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  Here she does an excellent job...

Editor's note:  Thanks to the keen eye for a great story by AL.com's Michelle Matthews, we bring you the wonderful story of DeKalb County's Hunter Norwood.  It is a story of real devotion to family and mankind and for what is actually important--not the contrived and...

Editor's note:  I am a sucker for stories like this.  (But I could have much worse faults--and probably do.  So when I came across this on FB, I knew I wanted to pass it along.  Besides, I think this is the real world, not the BS that we're told is politics these...

With bad news pounding us each day, a small glimpse at the goodness of humanity is more than welcomed. Which is why I share the following story from The Montgomery Advertiser. "It's pink, it rocks, it has tunes and the wheels light up. Just the thing for a 2-year-old...

From time to time I mention my friend Hope Zeanah, who is assistant superintendent for the Baldwin County school system.  She lives with her daughter and two grandchildren (Graysen and Sully) on Fish River.  Like so many down there, they were hammered by Hurricane...

John Pavlovitz is a minister in Wake Forest, NC.  I share one of his recent blog posts in which he expresses amazement at the discord and bitterness now being sown throughout the country.  I could not agree more. "I’ll never understand it. As long as I live, it will...

There it was.  A slight September breeze with a whiff of freshly-mowed grass.  And as so often happens at this age, you are suddenly jerked back decades.  This time it was to the fall of 1960 when you were 17 and playing your last football season for the Theodore...

Editor's note:  In these very, very weird times, stories such as the one below from The Washington Post are worth their weight in gold: "Johara Benrahou grabbed a red-white-and-blue blanket, a mask with dinosaur designs and three books as she ran outside the front...

There are exceptions to every rule. Before Sept. 12, the last wedding I recall attending was my son's in the fall of 2006.  But on Sept. 12, 2020 I came out of "retirement" to be there when Lauren Donaldson of Opp married Bill Paulk of Lowndes County.  I wouldn't have...

Editor's note: For reasons I do not understand there are people who apparently get their kicks by trying to gin up bogus info on Covid-19, twisting data out of context and putting forth conspiracy theories.  Which simply says to me that "all nuts don't grow on...

Laughter seems to be virtually forgotten these days given 1,000 deaths a day from Covid-19, economic issues, political unrest and natural disasters. However, a friend shared some PANDEMIC PUNS with me and i wanted to pass them along.  You may groan at some, but...

It's now been 11 years ago this week that I lost one of my dearest friends, James Parrish of Ashford, right outside of Dothan.  A longtime high school football official, he was refereeing the first ball game of the season when he suddenly fell dead. It was Friday...

We've all seen countless examples of children making an effort to make this world a better place.  Each one touches our heart.  And so will this story about seven-year Alden Young of the Birmingham suburb of McCalla who raised $1,000 to buy pack packs and supplies for...

My teenage years and those a ninth-grader faces today are daylight and dark.  Really mind-boggling really. I remember our first black and white TV, a party-line telephone, a stick shift and a clutch, a window fan.  The closest I probably ever came to technology was...

To say these are troubled times is a vast understatement.  The entire country is gripped by the pandemic.  No one seems to know exactly what to do.  And with the opening of schools across the country, the uncertainly grows much more. Indeed, if we have ever needed the...

Justin Minkel teaches 1st and 2nd grades at Jones Elementary in Springdale, Ark., a high-performing, high-poverty school where 85 percent of the students are English-language learners. Minkel was the 2007 Arkansas Teacher of the Year.  He shares his thoughts on where...

Most of us had never heard of the pandemic of 1918 until we ran headlong into the pandemic of 2020.  So from time to time we've come across references to 1918.  But what was it really all about?  Here is an excellent article by Christine Hauser of The New York...

While it may not be written in stone anywhere, I am 100 percent convinced that one of the rules of male peaceful coexistence with the opposite sex is NEVER, EVER utter a breath about a woman's weight. Wayne Reynolds is on the State School Board representing Huntsville...

While Alabama has little good news regarding Covid-19, a recent article on AL.com about how a number of entities have combined efforts to make sure every student returning to a institution of higher education in the next few weeks will be tested for the virus prior to...

Inexplicably this country continues to show the rest of the world what gross incompetence looks like when dealing with a national public health crisis.  Had we had this caliber leadership in WWII, we would have fought our enemies with bows and arrows. Given this...

As some have noticed, I am not above passing stuff along from the internet I find especially meaningful.  The article below is one since it does a good job of detailing how Massachusetts, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut and New York have managed to get a handle on...

As we all struggle to sort out information and misinformation about Covid-19, I came across the following article from Dr. David Hicks, Deputy Health Officer for Jefferson County that is worthy of your time: "As we navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, we would do well to...

One afternoon in March of 2019 I hopped in my car and headed to a local "doc in a box."  I really don't recall my symptoms, but I knew somethi9ng was wrong.  Shortly after I got there I was being loaded in an ambulance and shuttled to Baptist East ER.  I remember my...

We are all aware of the enormous toll Covid-19 has taken on this country, both health wise and economically.  But what most fail to consider is how badly we've botched our response to the pandemic as compared to many countries.  All who are so quick to pound their...

Michael Steele is an attorney from Maryland who was once that state's Lt. Governor.  He is seen often on cable news as one of dozens of commentators.  He is also a former chairman of the National Republican Committee.  As best I can tell, even though he is a...

How do you figure out when your fastball ain't as fast as it once was?  Or that it takes you longer to run from home plate to first base than a few years ago? In other words, what makes you face the reality that you have far more yesterdays than tomorrows and that...

Ardent Auburn University supporters, like me. are prone from time to time to refer to someone as "an Auburn man."  In a way, it's a rather mystical description, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder.  And while there may be some disagreement as to what it is, there...

You tube fascinates me.  I don't think I've ever looked for anything on it without finding what I was looking for.  And then there are all the things I just "stumble" across. Like this story about Doug White, who set off from Marco Island, FL on Easter Sunday 2009 to...

We all know children are special.  But from time to time we need to be reminded of just how special.  So I stole this from Facebook. What Love means to 4-8-year-old kids A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds 'What does love...

We've all been heartened recently by stories of fellow citizens and their acts of kindness and charity during the pandemic.  Here is one from the Washington Post that got my attention.  For one, it's about farmer Dennis Ruhnke of northeast Kansas.  Secondly, it was...

Recently I did a short piece about Medal of Honor winner Bennie Adkins of Opelika being a victim of the coronavirus.  I largely relied on info that Troy Turner, editor of the Opelika-Auburn News, wrote.  In fact, it was Troy's article that told me my friend of many...

Once again I have come face to face with new-fangled technology and as is always the case, tech won and I lost. Due to the pandemic, face-to-face meetings are being replaced by virtual get togethers.  I'm told these may be done with Google Hangouts, Skype, Facetime or...

You got to love U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Republican majority leader of the Senate.  That is if you look up to someone who epitomizes all that is wrong with Washington these days. With governors and local officials wondering how they will keep their...

So who the heck in Stuart Frandsen? He is a young man in Birmingham who owns Alabama Bio Clean, a company that specializes in biohazard abatement.  Which means he is very busy during these times. And why I say he should be heading our national effort is because while...

America lost an honest-to-goodness war hero last week when Command Sgt. Major Bennie Adkins passed away in Opelika after contracting the coronavirus.  There are fewer than 100 living Medal of Honor recipients in the U.S.  Adkins was one of them. Adkins was recognized...

Like everyone else, I have followed all the discussion about testing to see who has the coronavirus, and who does not, with great interest.  All the health experts I've heard (this does not include politicians and TV talking heads) say more widespread and accurate...

The only sound in my bedroom comes from the clock.  Tick tock.  Tick tock.  Tick tock. Second by lonely second, time comes and goes.  And in that exact moment, somewhere in this world a baby drew their first breathe and someone breathed their last one.  While all of...

Editor's note: I did not write the following.  Rather, "borrowed" it from a cousin's Facebook page.  Wish I had written it.  You will love the last line.  Enjoy. Half of us are going to come out of this quarantine as amazing cooks. The other half will come out with a...

Like most, I have been mightily baffled that toilet paper is almost non-existent these days.  That it, the kind most of us use in our bathroom at home. Then a couple of days ago I heard a reporter on TV talk about what he'd learned as to why there is a shortage.  I...

As hard as it may be to believe, for the first time in my life I went to the grocery yesterday and bought salt and pepper.  You know, one of those little round packages with holes in the top.  Which means I can now scramble eggs and sprinkle salt and  pepper on them....

NEVER in my 77 years has the United States faced a time as daunting as the one we now face.  Unbelievably it was just a month ago today (March 3, 2020) when Alabama went to the polls for our presidential primary.  That was the day voters slam dunked the attempt by the...

Like most homes built in the 1930s and 40s, Grandpa's little wooden structure at Rt. 2 Red Level had a porch.  And a swing and some rocking chairs.  The swing was perpendicular to the road, so Grandpa sat in it with his back to the house and his feet to the road. ...

Like everyone else, I am caught up in a world of great uncertainty, unlike anything I can ever remember.  Both of my parents were children of the Great Depression, a time that marked this nation for decades  They were also young adults when the country undertook the...

While I am definitely low tech and challenged by most things electronic, that is not the case with my daughter Kim.  So when she passes along info, I pay attention. In light of the chaos and confusion about coronavirus, I share this info Kim shared with me. Beware of...