Volume 7 No. 1
WORDPLAY, my official newsletter, is back! So many asked for it that I decided to bite the bullet and bring it back.
So what's new on the website? Articles in READING and WRITING. Check it all out.
2007 was a busy and rewarding year for me. I'm really excited about the fiction I'll be publishing on www.romantic4ever.com. I hope you'll cruise over to that website and read Chapter 1 of MOONLIGHT ON SNOW: A Love Story that begins in January and will be concluded in December 2008.
For your pleasure this month, here's a little something to entertain you.
YOUR PEOPLE
by Joan Reeves Copyright 2008
On a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at Vicksburg, there are large carved reliefs mounted in a curving line below a Civil War cannon emplacement.
My mom had me take a picture of a particular relief honoring a Major Ogden because, in her words: "He's Miz Wilson's people." You see, in the South, everyone greets a newcomer with the question, "and who are your people, dear?" They're not just being nosy. Family connections are just as important now as they've always been. You are not just you. You are part of a lineage dating back generations.
My mom and her friends read the newspaper and talk about who's in the Obituaries and who's in the Arrest Report. Yes, in my home town, if you get arrested in the parish, there's no chance that people won't find out. You'll be listed in the next edition of the weekly newspaper.
If someone can't remember the person under discussion, then someone else will explain: "You remember him. He's Earlene's younger sister's brother-in-law's nephew who graduated from high school in (name of a nearby town). He was with that Morton boy when he shot his toe off so he wouldn't get drafted and have to go to Vietnam. He went on to LSU, but he got into drugs and went to California and was arrested for selling cocaine. Then he got saved in prison, came home, and was preaching down on the river in that little church they built where that old bar used to be before it burned."
"Oh. Him. "
So it goes in small town America, and I find it charming and delightful. I've always been fascinated by the mores of southern small town life and have incorporated that sensibility in several of my books. The one I'm working on now is set in a fictional town that's a stand-in for my home town. I've often wondered if small towns in other regions of the country are the same.
In any event, even though this Major Ogden died in 1863 in the Battle of Vicksburg, he is still part of a family and is still remembered by his people.
That's kind of comforting, isn't it?
