by Carrie Allen Tipton
Ever since the advent of text messaging several years ago, my mother faithfully sends a peculiar annual dispatch, a yearly version of the phrase “I’m headed to Glory tonight,” hurtling through the ether from her phone in northwest Mississippi …

by Robert Iulo

My father, who had been to New Orleans when he was in the Marines told us, “The best advice I can give you to make you trip memorable is to find an old time bartender and order a Ramos Gin Fizz” …

With short, shuffling steps and a rocking gait, he made his way from the end of Main Street through the parking lot of Walker’s Drive-In, carefully placing his cane, navigating the roots of the giant oak that had erupted through the crumbling asphalt. His Sunday best sagging over his bent frame and a gray fedora on his head …

The 1,500 miles between my dorm room in Rhode Island and my parents’ house in Mississippi made visits difficult. Though I flew home for Thanksgiving my freshman year, I gently explained to my mom that the appalling price of the ticket seemed a bit excessive to attempt four years in a row. And so the following Thanksgiving, …

It can be easy to think these days that everything has already been discovered, and not only that, digitized too — that all the books have been scanned and the rivers charted, leaving not a square inch of Terra Incognita on Google Earth. But anyone who has done any kind of archival research knows otherwise …