Writers’ Series presents national columnist at Thursday lunch and talk
On Thursday, the Columbus Arts Council’s Mississippi Writers’ Series presents nationally syndicated columnist and author Rheta Grimsley Johnson in a “lunch and talk” at the Rosenzweig Arts Center in downtown Columbus.
Rheta Johnson: Build that wall
I’ve been three times to the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West, Florida, hoping with each visit to find some secret to writing short, declarative sentences that resonate with the reading public and sell millions of books.
Rheta Johnson: My old man and lesser writers
I’m scheduled this month to show up at a writer’s fair in Mississippi’s Jackson, a town where I’ve only ever distinguished myself by not being hired by the local newspaper, being evicted from an apartment for parking a rotten sailboat in the side yard and working briefly for United Press International after that news organization stopped issuing regular paychecks.
Rheta Johnson: Kris’ birthday coming down
As soon as the heat dropped below 90 degrees one recent late afternoon — about 7 o’clock, really — I moved the CD player to the front porch, adjusted the fan just so and put my feet up on a coffee table. I played “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and “The Pilgrim” and “The Captive.”
Rheta Johnson: Rent to own or get a loan
President and Mrs. Obama reportedly are about to join a club in which I’m glad to no longer hold membership: They are about to become renters.
Rheta Johnson: Voila, New Orleans
It is Twelfth Night. Beneath a balcony in the French Quarter, we listen as dignitaries high above welcome Joan of Arc and the start of Carnival season.
Rheta Johnson: Catch me if you can
I was making a gingerbread man, a ginger-Trump-man, using candy orange slices for the infamous hair, all the while trying to figure out why a smart friend the night before had said what everyone and his brother keeps declaring with conviction: The Donald is sure to lose steam any day now.
Rheta Johnson: Thankful for small moments of peace
The world’s problems are best solved with old friends around a warm fire in the kitchen stove in Fishtrap Hollow.
Rheta Johnson: A bathtub, some clowns, now terror
I am in my quiet spot on this earth today, but thinking only of another place, another country, a good friend.
Rheta Johnson: Stars and bars and endless battles
It strikes me that those who are defending the Confederate flag in the name of their Southern heritage are a little late.
Rheta Johnson: The Cry Wolf Project
There is a website that purports to expose “myths about the economy and government,” Cry Wolf Project.
Rheta Johnson: At least not landlocked
It was a “magical place,” she says, back in 1992, when her parents bought the big house overlooking the Mississippi Sound in the quaint harbor town of Pass Christian.
Rheta Johnson: Reaching the masses
The New York Times comes to the mailbox in fits and starts, sometimes three papers a day, often none at all.
Rheta Johnson: You got TRBL
Artist Christopher Wool must be really good at texting. His stencil sign paintings, according to the Guggenheim Museum, “freely stripped out punctuation, disrupted conventional spacing and removed letters.”
Rheta Johnson: Dogs, clocks and a drink of Crown Royal
Luke Hall had a name like a hero in an old Western — simple, strong and uncompromising. It was fitting.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson: The books that rocked your world
It was a bookstore in an old house that also sold chocolate treats and bottled beer, pretty much a working definition of heaven.
A group of convivial folks, mostly from the nearby college, had come to listen to Alabama author and veteran journalist Frye Gaillard talk about his latest, “The Books That Mattered, A Reader’s Memoir.”
Rheta Grimsley Johnson: Tattoos go mainstream
I haven’t seen the Ladies’ Home Journal in about a million years, except maybe in the dentist’s office when I was trying to avoid a television permanently set on Fox News.
Somebody’s grandchild was selling magazines for a school project, and Ladies’ Home Journal was the only one on the list I recognized.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson: Shave and a haircut
Young Barney Schoby has an actor’s animation and a historian’s mind. Who better to guide you through the place that does more to explain the nuanced Natchez heyday than any other?
Rheta Johnson: Ghosts of Christmas past
While the rest of the country is shoveling and shivering, South Georgia is at its loveliest. The camellias are blooming, live oaks keep their leaves and trees loaded with bright-orange kumquats and satsumas are exotically common.
Rheta Johnson: Confederacy of dunces
It was Cormac McCarthy cold, the wind rushing through deserted and dark buildings, whipping at loose trash that increasingly piled up on the rutted streets.