It's Monday Yet Again....

And again I have been overwhelmed by the very kind compliments and messages I have received about my Cooksville United Methodist post.  It was even mentioned in church three times Sunday - twice in Sunday school and again at the beginning of the service by our pastor.  I’m woman enough to say that I was more than a little worried about how it would be received and am happy to say the pastor and long time members were all very happy with what I had written.  So again, thank you so much.  

I’m my very own worst critic.  I often wonder if the intention of my writing gets across to the reader.  I wonder if what I’m writing is finding an audience.  I wonder if the flow of my writing and my grammatical errors are a distraction to the meaning of the piece.  All in all I worry too much instead of just getting the words into print, and then the truly terrifying part putting it out there for anyone and everyone to read.  One of my literary heroes is Eudora Welty.  Her simple style speaks to me as well as the subjects she covered in her writing.  The short story that first caught my attention and made me love her was “Why I live at the P.O.” which you can read for free HERE. Not only did I find this in high school, but our high school library (where I worked during study hall and P.E.) had a set of cassette tapes (yep I’m that old) of her reading her short stories and this story was on it.  I can remember shelving books, contraband walkman clipped to the band of my skirt, unsuccessfully holding in my laughter as I listened to someone very much like my grandmother telling the most wonderful stories in my ears.  I read anything and everything I could on her and in college found out she was a photographer for the W.P.A. during the depression.  Eudora Welty, Walker Evans, and William Christenberry are my trinity of Southern photography.  She was the very coolest of ladies and I thank the good Lord I found her in high school.  Still need to make the pilgrimage to her home in Jackson, Mississippi - maybe one day Allie and I can do that.  She is a lot of the reason I love southern history and more importantly the simple every day history of the every day man and woman. The people upon which an entire society is built, but often times are forgotten. Those are the stories I'm looking to write down and share. I'll never be a Welty or even approaching something close but I can share my stories. I can save the history that I can.

So today I’ll leave you with a short quote from our lady author, photographer, and purveyor of Southern Culture:

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.  - Eudora Welty