Photo: More beauty lives in an old country store than the newest McMansion. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Title my photo Struggle. Caption it: Dreams die along the back roads. First two sentences: Can’t even sit in a chair and look forward to better days. Stuck in reverse. AContinue Reading

Photo: Blue flag irises carpet Red Bluff Bain in blue come spring. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net The rains of late and spring’s approach set my mind on the Carolina bays, those coastal plain wetlands of mystery and life. The elliptical depressions are filling with water and the greatContinue Reading

By Jennifer Tardy Recently, a client told me she couldn’t understand why she was gaining weight. “I’m barely eating,” she said. Her typical day looked like this:Breakfast: coffeeLunch: something lightSnack: a protein barDinner: pretty clean On paper, it looked disciplined.On the scale, she was up eight pounds. So we lookedContinue Reading

By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net A lulu of a lady sold my parents a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. Miss Lulu Goolsby to be exact. It changed my life living in rural Georgia as I did. I read that set from A to Z at least three times.Continue Reading

From little acorns mighty oaks grow. By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Though my hair was chestnut brown, I was green, a young writer hoping to create something memorable. I needed inspiration and I found it in a novel, Shining Tides. Winfield Brooks wrote it. The inside flap said theContinue Reading

By Tom Poland, A Southern WriterTomPoland.net Cell phones are a big deal but to some of us the transistor was an even bigger deal. I was disobeying my parents staying up late (school night) in my bedroom listening to clear channel WLS in Chicago over a transistor radio. I wasContinue Reading