Entries by Susan Harper

By Susan Harper

Every time I walk into our new library, my heart soars up to that high white ceiling in the newest part, those beautiful beams we agonized over (should they be white? should they be natural wood? should they be there at all?), and those tall windows that let in so much light. And then I’m thankful all over again that Commerce is my home: a real library town — a town that started its library from scratch nearly 75 years ago and built it up, over years of hard work and consistent dedication, to this astonishingly beautiful facility.

Meanwhile, all around us, the winds of change are blowing. Libraries that have stood for decades as models of architectural beauty and have inspired millions to pursue learning are now “gloriously inflated book boxes,” according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, and their relevance “is being questioned in an age that looks to the Internet for its intellectual resources.” [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Whew! I’ve made it through Mothers’ Day again. The outcome is always in doubt right to the end, in part because — as a result of some charm or spell or curse, or perhaps simply due to the far-flung nature of my widely dispersed family — I invariably spend the second Sunday in May all by myself. This gives me way too much time to revisit the long list of my maternal shortcomings: the fallings from grace, the outbursts of temper, the seemingly infinite failures of insight, and a stone blindness to things that were right there in front of me. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

As we passed a local church, I read the letterboard sign out front. “You can give without loving,” it said, “but you can’t love without giving.”

We were in a small town in middle Georgia, driving to the cemetery to bury my cousin Douglas in an old family plot, under a magnolia tree, beside his mother. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Monday’s New York Times had an arresting front-page headline. “Karzai’s Office,” it said, “Gets Bags Full of CIA Cash.”

The opening paragraph of the article elaborated on this astonishing announcement, explaining that for over 10 years, “wads of American dollars” were stuffed into “suitcases, backpacks, and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags” and delivered to Afghanistan’s president by our country’s Central Intelligence Agency every month or so. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

A sign caught my eye as we were crossing the lovely old Queensboro Bridge a couple of weekends ago, on our way back from Carnegie Hall in Manhattan. Hung like a poster above the side rail, the sign said, “It can only be done if you DREAM it first.”

Or at least I think that’s what it said. The lettering was in all different sizes, we were flashing past it at 55 miles per hour, and I was in the back seat, so just glimpsing the sign was almost like a dream. But I’ve had it rolling around in my mind ever since, like a rogue marble.
[Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

One of the many treats of my childhood visits with my grandmother here in Commerce was enjoying her toast each morning at breakfast.

This was partly because I was sitting barefooted in her big sunny yellow kitchen, and partly because of the jar of homemade blackberry jelly that she set down on the table every day. I can taste that jelly now, just thinking about it. But my very favorite thing about Gran’s toast was that she buttered white bread on one side and then toasted it in her electric oven. So it was one-sided white-bread toast, with the butter melted into the top. And it was heaven! I pestered my poor mother about this when we went home to Long Island at the end of each summer, but we were blessed (or cursed) with a toaster, and obliged to eat two-sided toast. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Having seen the unspeakable mass horror that gun-wielding young men caused last year — in Colorado, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Connecticut — some Georgia legislators seem to feel that the necessary response is defiance.

With an unseemly haste that (in my view) insults the memory of the 151 victims of last year’s gun massacres, they are pushing bills that would do away with all gun licensing and registration in Georgia and lift bans on guns in churches, colleges, and universities. Our own state representative is suggesting that for guns manufactured and sold right here in Georgia, no federal regulations need apply. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

Whenever I get together with my brother, or my friend Deanna, or another friend, Nelson Nix, who’s a columnist each month in these pages, the talk eventually turns to a single question: Can our country be saved? Or have things already gone so far that there’s no turning back?

The focus of these discussions is always the same: Congress. And they’re non-political, in the sense of Democrat or Republican, Tea Party or no party, liberal or conservative or independent. The problem we all seem to see is that, at the national level, at least, many if not most of our senators and representatives seem not to be working for us any longer. We just elect them, based on what they say in public about their positions, intentions and beliefs. [Full Story »] 

By Susan Harper

As a child I was told persuasively by one of my playmates that if I accidentally swallowed a watermelon seed during the summer, it would take root in my stomach and begin to send out shoots. This sounded like a realistic possibility to me at the time. I imagined green tendrils growing out of my ears by the following spring, seeking the sun, twining in my hair, sprouting little melons.

The image was so vivid and creepy that I was very, very careful not to swallow any of those little black seeds (which I suppose was the original point of the tale). And even though my watermelon-loving mother tried to disabuse me of the notion that I could grow plants in my stomach, the faint shadow of that image is still with me, and watermelon is still something I never buy and seldom eat. [Full Story »]