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  I’ve been writing this column for about…two and a half years now. It’s a pretty niche topic, if you think about it. Writing about our history and culture from a modern perspective can be kinda limiting, because so much of our narrative was written by tarnished hands or subjective points of view. It’s hard…

By Christa Jennings Senior Staff Writer   In another illustration of how badly volunteers are needed, the Ray Volunteer Fire Department has had to temporarily cease responding to calls. With no volunteers serving at the department, it has been unable to respond to any calls recently. However, it is hoped that the situation will soon…

  Jason McCall is a fascinating poet and native of the State of Alabama. I’ll tell y’all more about him next week. This week, however, one of his poems caught my eye, and I’d like to share it with you: “My Great-great-great-great Grandfather was a Railroad Man who Owned my Great-great-great-great Grandmother and Shares my…

  You know, sometimes we may feel like there are too many special holidays and remembrances. Fiddler’s Month, Eastern Crab Day, National Day of Curtains, etc. And it can be really easy to make light of all those seemingly extraneous remembrances. However, sometimes we pick a real winner. July is Disability Awareness Month. This annual…

  I don’t need to tell you who Jimmy Buffett is. The Hawaiian shirt-clad, boozy crooner is like if you looked for Roy Orbison’s Bizarro. We’ve heard all the classics, and many of us have availed ourselves of some other Jimmy Buffet-adjacent business… He’s got bars, kitchenware, restaurants, retirement homes, a casino…you name it, he’s…

Sent by Paul Shaw   I heard this one from my friend Jimmy Thomas. Back in the days of the old west a wagon train was heading west, and the wagon master and the people on the train had underestimated the amount of food needed for the journey. They had traveled for weeks and were…

  Warning: This series contains information about murder of people young and old. If this sort of grisly information is particularly bothersome for you, I recommend you skip along for a bit. If you recall from last week, we talked about Nannie Doss, a not-so-sweet lady from near Anniston. By the time we left off,…

  We all feel that we’ve made it through COVID-19. That’s right, 19. You know, because it first reared its head in 2019. More than two years ago. Most of the people I’ve talked to about the epidemic reflect on what changed within them during this period of time. We learned more about ourselves, we…