You sit in your
prison, excreting blame and
flinging it through iron bars you didn’t even know
you had wrought.
In your red-and-white-ticked carny coat, you swap privilege
for entitlement
in a shell game that fools no one else
but you. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, April 2009 ~~
I’m not a farmer. I don’t garden. I couldn’t grow kudzu on a bet. Even houseplants die on my watch. Query: Has anyone—I mean, anyone—else ever neglected a philodendron to its death? And I’m talking dead-dead, not ooh-that-looks-pretty-bad-dead. I never even succumbed to the Chia Pet craze, instinctively knowing at a tender age that Chia Puppy was doomed to malnutrition and mange under my feeble care. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, April 2009 ~~
Sometimes I feel like I am surely the only person in Carrboro without any musical aspirations. I’m not in a band. I’ve never been in a band. I’ve never even been “with” the band. I did have a crush on one of the guys in the Monday Mood back in the day at Chapel Hill High, if that counts for anything.
I don’t write songs. I can’t even begin to read music. I think the last time I played an instrument was when Ms. Cantrell taught us to play Greensleeves on the recorder at Seawell Elementary School, circa 1979. Ms. Cantrell is now teaching music to my two youngest children. At Carrboro Elementary. But I digress. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, March 2009 ~~
Do you subscribe to the helicopter mode of parenting, or are you into raising free-range kids?
Here’s a quiz:
Your children are at sleepover camp for two weeks. On the Saturday they stay over you
A) are at the camp gates before dawn, tearfully clutching a teddy bear and homemade cookies, waving a banner that says “I LOVE YOU (insert child’s name here)!!!”
B) sleep late and make plans to do something decidedly fun that does NOT involve cooking, cleaning or chauffeuring
C) do neither but later feel both regret and guilt for not doing the one or the other. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, March 2009 ~~
I’ve called a lot of places “home.” More than two dozen, including a couple of dorms, nine apartments, 13 houses, and a hotel room in New York City. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, March 2009 ~~
There comes a time every year in Carrboro, when the daffodils are unfurling and bare dogwood branches are studded with buds that dramatically pause before bursting into dazzling bloom. It is a magical time, replete with the accompanying cheery trill of birdsong. And, yet, somehow I miss it. Instead of the glories of purple crocus and the flush of redbud, I am watching an orange ball go through a metal hoop against the hallelujah chorus of squeaking sneakers. Screw spring.
God, I love the sound of basketball shoes on polished wood. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, March 2009 ~~
College basketball has undeniably captured the imagination of the people of North Carolina, and Carrboro and Chapel Hill enjoy a full concentration of true blue fans. Former Democratic Presidential candidate and US Senator, John Edwards, is one such fan. “Part of it is tradition,” he said of his passion for the sport. “People who are my age have grown up being saturated with competitive, high quality basketball. We have had good basketball for decades.”
Of course, the million dollar question is… Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, January 2009 ~~
As a white woman in a progressive society, I don’t often think about matters of race. After all, it doesn’t really affect me, right? As a white woman, I mean.
Oh, sure, I am aware of race. I have the sense that if someone is not white, then his or her race will be one of the main ways I will catalogue that person in my brain. “She’s the black woman who teaches…” “He’s the latino guy who writes…” I’m pretty sure I have never said, “They are the white couple who work…” I don’t mean to do it. I certainly don’t want to do it. It makes me feel a little ashamed. But I do it, and I’m not the only one. Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, January 2009 ~~
I’m fascinated by language, words, names, and naming. Not just proper names, but the names that have been assigned to objects through the ages. The way mythology teaches of the world being spoken into creation, followed by the naming of all the creatures.
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Names reflect consensus, agreement within a group of people that a word or sound belongs with a certain object. At some point it was agreed that the thing you hold and read, with pages of writing between two covers, is, in English, a “book,” and the leather thing you pull on to keep your feet warm and dry is a “boot.” Continue reading
~~ Originally printed in Carrboro (NC) Free Press, November 2008 ~~
My people are North Carolina people. Mountain people. My mother’s mother went to high school with Andy Griffith in Mount Airy. Mimi’s daddy, Quilly pack, was the original “Floyd” the Barber. My father’s mother’s father actually was the Deputy Sheriff in Pilot Mountain. I mean, Mount Pilot.
When Grandma Pack wanted some Yuletide mistletoe, she used her shotgun to blast some out of the treetops. And my father’s father’s father was a bootleg moonshiner. There’s a story about him shooting up the police station to break out his son. Or something. The details are a bit sketchy. Continue reading
Ashley Atkins 