ADVANCED SEARCH CRITERIA

Keywords:

Published between dates: (MM/DD/YYYY) and (MM/DD/YYYY)

By author:

In category:

43 RESULTS

Rheta Johnson: Electile dysfunction in the Big Easy

Posted 2/22/2014 in National Columns

NEW ORLEANS -- A security guard and a lawyer walked into a bar. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. It's bad, all right, but no joke. Everyone in this town, including two drinking buddies, was talking about the federal public corruption trial of former mayor Ray Nagin.

Rheta Johnson: Gestalt gardener with guts

Posted 2/15/2014 in National Columns

WAVELAND -- I got to walk right past the shiny, new, Christmas-ornament-red hook and ladder truck at the fire department here to see one of my heroes, radio personality Felder Rushing. One recent Saturday morning he was speaking upstairs at the firehouse. I couldn't help but think about how many of the boys of my generation wanted to be firemen when they grew up. Never knew a single one who wanted to become "a gestalt gardener," which is how Felder describes himself.

Cellophane hearts and soft centers

Posted 2/8/2014 in National Columns

I was using the free White Pages website to try to find the ZIP code for a friend's address. An advertisement popped up, something called Instant Checkmate, which is not free.

Rheta Johnson: A vicious circle

Posted 1/11/2014 in National Columns

NEW YORK CITY -- If you can imagine a place today that would extend credit to struggling but brilliant journalists, novelists and theater people, where, say, Donna Tartt and Jon Stewart and Tina Brown might convene daily for lunch and drinks, then there might be a contemporary equivalent of The Algonquin Round Table.

Rheta Johnson: A last-minute list of books for Christmas

Posted 12/21/2013 in National Columns

When niece Chelsey was little, I lavished her with Christmas gifts too numerous and fanciful to remember. There were faux-fur coats with Dalmatian spots, diminutive dolls bundled as quintuplets, plastic horses that cost more than the real thing.

Rheta Johnson: A world apart

Posted 12/7/2013 in National Columns

FISHTRAP HOLLOW -- Lightning or some other benevolent act of fate struck the magic modem that brings this technology-heavy century into our otherwise peaceful home.

Rheta Johnson: Thankful for a nervous Saban

Posted 11/30/2013 in National Columns

FISHTRAP HOLLOW -- I rarely watch those "news" videos the Internet pushes, the ones where you are force-fed a couple of advertisements before you reach the meat.

Rheta Johnson: Something pulled me back

Posted 11/23/2013 in National Columns

PASS CHRISTIAN -- Today she looks like a beautiful Indian princess, like Walt Disney's Pocahontas, her thick black braid rapunzeling down the back of her tunic of red, the color in which her mother dressed her "Mimi." Author Jesmyn Ward's ancestry is mixed with African, French, Spanish and Native American blood, allowing a rainbow of perspective, which makes her feel "lucky," she says, as a writer. But for facile identification, "I choose to embrace African American. It's a political choice."

Rheta Johnson: Country mouse in a city trap

Posted 11/9/2013 in National Columns

ATLANTA -- In 1994, I borrowed the truck that hauled the loaner bed to the thinly disguised doublewide I was renting outside of Atlanta.

Rheta Johnson: Portrait of a man

Posted 10/12/2013 in National Columns

His prized possessions were a Stetson hat, a portrait print signed by Kentucky's Col. Harlan Sanders and a putter shaped like a hot dog and autographed by Bear Bryant, though three of his children had graduated from Auburn and he never played golf.

Rheta Johnson: Current situation brings to mind Jimmy Carter's 'malaise'

Posted 10/5/2013 in National

Fall feels different this year. For one thing, so far I've spent too much of it inside. I missed the Harvest Moon rising over the lake. I forgot to send Martha Hammond the first red leaf I saw along my road.

Rheta Johnson: The kindness of strangers

Posted 9/28/2013 in National Columns

I once believed that at the end of our lives, relatives and loved ones would take care of us, bring us comfort, break the monotony of long, last hours.

Rheta Johnson: Here she comes...

Posted 9/21/2013 in National Columns

Colorado floods of so-called biblical proportions, fire on the Boardwalk, a Miss America contestant with visible tattoos? It really might be the End Times.

Rheta Johnson: Gone with the Schwinn

Posted 8/31/2013 in National Columns

The Wall Street Journal had one of its trademark front-page features the other day about how slow-bicycling sans spandex and road helmets is making a fast comeback. One man's "Slow Bicycle Movement" Facebook group has 7,300 members, the article said.

Rheta Johnson: Keeping Paula Deen down

Posted 8/24/2013 in National Columns

Now that the world is rid of a dangerous Deep South cook named Paula Deen, we can rest easy. Stripped of her epicurean empire and rode out on a rail through the virtual streets all buttered and feathered, our nation finally is free of racism. Isn't it?