Heartbreaker Blues by River Jordan


I started out this morning before dawn. Sitting outside with coffee, tiki torches lit, waiting for the world to wake up around me. There's that fall wind in the trees thing going on and the birds are calling like crazy. A male cardinal lands a foot away and stares at me. Okay, I get it. Up to get birdseed. Scatter. Sit back down. Now, I am like Tarzana, the woods alive with scampering and scatterings and chatterings of all manner. The light is coming and the night is being peeled away, layer-by-layer, all too soon.

And then, for reasons that escape me, I'm thinking about a good boy that I done wrong. Just a nice boy that I had liked 'oh, so much' then had stopped liking for reasons I cannot remember that had nothing to do with anything other than being too young to be liking anyone and being at an age where Fickle is a four letter word. I had told him, Yes I'd go to his senior high dinner (dinner instead of a prom because his school was from back up in the woods and they weren't having a prom) And I bought a dress to go (a long green thing that I can now see made me look like Kermit the Frog) but somewhere between the buying of the dress and the wearing of the dress I fell out of like and the falling had a great, ugly resounding crash. I fulfilled my commitment as if it had been a cold business deal with a handshake. Not smiling very much. Not seeming to having a good time. And later refusing to join the groups of young couples that made their way to the beach to does young couple stuff. Drive around. Ride a few rides. Laugh a little. So for the remainder of the night my young date had to sail forth stag and I put on my pajamas and happily stayed home. Now, I look back and think of all the things that a penitent sinner might think of on their death bed. Or from the place of being a mother, a better human being, a grown-up, I think great cosmic thoughts like, "Oh, my." And, "Poor boy," and "Shame on me," for being whatever young, petulant age I was and breaking that boy's heart. And the only thing left to me is to lift up a small prayer of blessing over his life today. Something southern and simple like, "Lord, if that boy is still alive just bless him, bless him, bless him." So I'm now spiritual Tarzana surrounded by the torches and birds and chipmunks offering up prayers for this old beau.

And then immediately I flash forward a few years and think of another boy. One that I had a crush on the size of Texas. He used to stop into the drugstore where I worked selling lipsticks and gifts for the holidays and wrapping Christmas presents, and he would hang around and talk with me and my crush just knew no bounds. It grew everyday like the Grinch's heart until the glory, hallelujah of days when he finally asked me if I'd like to go out with him to the movies or some such thing. He could have said to walk his dog and I would have been nodding, "Yes!" I remember telling my mother about this upcoming event with great excitement. I remember buying a new shirt for the occasion. I remember him coming into the store that most anticipated high and holy day of 'the big date' and telling me as I stood behind the drugstore counter that he couldn't go (wherever) after all because his aunt had come to town and his mother said he had to stay home to visit. I stood there just wiped away. In a flash one big eraser had crossed the chalkboard of my happiness and then blam, happy dream date is gone. The disappointment lay in my mouth like bruised fruit. Tangible, overripe, sour. So later, at my mother's encouragement to help me over the hump of this teenage tragedy, I went out with a group of friends to the local Pizza place and who do you think I saw there sans the old aunt come to visit? That's right; it was His majesty with a group of laughing friends having a great, big old time without me. Two things happened at once. He broke my little heart and broke that crush thing right off of me at the same time, he did. And the only thing I can do when I think of him now is offer up that southern prayer saying, "If that boy is still alive, bless him Lord, just bless him," through slightly, gritted teeth because praying is not the first thing that comes to Tarzana's mind this time.

Which all makes a good case for not allowing kids to 'date' until they are thirty or married whichever comes first. And it also shows me from a long way off, something I couldn't see at that young state. Which is that from here I can tell who grew to be the stronger man. I can put those two boys side by side and I can tell you the one that was overlooked, was pushed aside, was the better of the two.

But now, surrounded by sunrise and peaceful morning, I realize that in our beautiful and broken human state we always manage to go through life hurting a few people and being hurt by others and sometimes the best we can do is to try to be decent, fair and truthful to that circle of friends and new found strangers that we're fortunate enough to meet. And to keep well the ones who know us with all our good, bad, and ugly, and somehow continue to make a choice to love us anyway in spite of ourselves.

And all I can say to that is Bless us, Lord, just bless us. Bless our broken and breaking hearts as we keep treading the daily waters of our existence.

Guest Blog

Warts and All

To Kill A Mockingbird is the kind of novel that all good southern writers read before they take on their own long efforts. It’s one of the books in the southern writers’ bible. I’m sure you’ve heard of it. So, a writer born as about as deep in the south as one can get, Macon Georgia—of course folks here in Georgia don’t count Florida, well maybe the panhandle— should have read this book, right? After all she has invented a world of characters using folklore, emotion, and downright southern history that inhabited her childhood. Of course she’s read the book. Wrong. I’m ashamed to say I never read Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. I thought I had. I bragged I had read it, but the truth is I would have gone along in my lie, living a life of bliss, if not for leading a book club in the reading of this novel.

When several of the members asked what my feelings were on the book, I racked my brain for one original thought on the content, a thought not connected to the movie. After all I made an A on the paper I wrote in high school. My only answer could be that I was so young when I read it. How in the world was I expected to remember such a thing? I mean how many books do you think I’ve read since high school?

Of course I would read the book again. I needed to refresh my memory. I had a copy on my shelves gathering dust. I decided to lead the group in sections. We would discuss several chapters at a time. Our first assignment was chapters 1-7. Being the professional writer—with only a tiny affliction of OCD—I did my background research on the author, Harper Lee.

Up until that point, I had believed Harper Lee was dead. I'm not sure why I thought this other than she doesn't get mentioned much anymore. That's what I got for thinking. My first hit in my internet search took me to a recent Oprah magazine, where I found an article she had written about reading and writing real letters. She was alive and well. That should have been a sign that something in my memory stunk to the high heavens. If I didn’t know Harper Lee was still alive and I live right next door here in Georgia, how could I have read the book? How indeed?

I read the first seven chapters expecting to jog a memory. Instead I was taken into another world, a world much older than the south I remembered, but similar in so many ways. The voice was familiar like listening to my great aunt telling a story in her big living room, sipping ice tea from a jelly jar or lazy evenings, when I was kid, sitting in the front yard of my grandmother’s house, watching the sky come alive with orange, red, and yellow. It was so hot—most houses didn’t have air conditioning back then—the cooler evening air was welcomed, even to a young girl with tons of energy.

When I read about Maudie, the lady who lived across the street from Scout in Maycomb, Alabama, I knew I’d never read this book. How could I forget such dialogue?

“Miss Maudie stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. ‘You are too young to understand it,’ she said, “but sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of—oh, of your father.’”
For some reason I pictured a cliff note book thrown on the bed I slept in as a teenager. I didn’t read cliff notes! Not me, a writer to the bottom of my soul. Did I?

I drowned myself in the rhythm of Harper Lee’s language as if I might die that night and never know the end to such a beautifully written book. Maybe somehow things would change and Tom Robinson wouldn’t die before he had a chance to find justice. Movies never go along with the books anyway, right?

When I finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird, I was fifty years old, the same age as Atticus Finch, Scout and Jem’s famously old father. What I gained from reading this book as a mature adult—without some English teacher forcing me—is history and a reminder of a people nearly extinct now. Ms. Lee tamed my beloved south with all its beauty and flaws if only for two-hundred and eight-one pages.
What did the women in the book club think of a leader who claimed to know a book she never read? Well, I never told them. When they read this, my guilt conscious will be cleared. And like one of my dear friends always says, “I love my friends deeply, warts and all,”

The lessons in Harper Lee’s writing are timeless, and I am reminded she was a one book author, but my gosh, people, look at the book! What did I learn from my experience? I learned that with older characters like Atticus and me we have to be given some allowance on our memories.

Ann Hite contributor to Marlo Thomas' The Right Words At the Right Time IIhttp://pwp.att.net/p/pwp-painteddoorhttp://womanwriter.blogspot.com/

Promises to Keep

by Nicole Seitz (http://www.nicoleseitz.com/)

I just dropped my kids off at a creative play summer camp. No big deal. Three hours in the morning to draw, pretend to be sharks and superheros...three hours for Mommy to get some work done. But alas, today, my three-and-a-half-year-old son was glued to my leg. I could not pry him off and walked around, stumbling, teetering like a weeble-wobble. Not only that, but I was parked in a spot that, say, maybe I shouldn't have parked in. I needed to drop the kids off and exit. Quickly. But this was not in the cards today.

After ten minutes or so, I resorted to what many parents lovingly refer to as "bribery". This word has such a negative connotation, so I prefer to think of it as "promises". A promise of something better. A reward. Sounds much more positive, more hopeful, less seedy.

It is HOPE that keeps us going when we feel like clinging to our mother's thigh.

Last night, I attended a talk and slide show by the amazing Brett Lott whose new book, Ancient Highway, has just been released. At the point for questions, I asked him how his faith plays into his storytelling. Lott said that as a Christian, his faith is all about hope, the promise of something better, and as such, his novels happen to be about hope. Not that they are all roses and happy endings, because life is not that way. But hope is a common thread in his writing.

I think people like to read books that have hope in them. We search for things to hope for. We like to believe there is HOPE at the end of the day. I think hope for something better, to be able to get through trials, is what makes life worth living.

Have you ever known someone without hope? Can you think of anything worse?

To lose hope, there is no use going on. Ah, but with hope, we can do almost anything. With the hope of finishing, feeling that satisfaction of having done it, I can and will meet my challenging next deadline for my fourth novel. Though some days are teeth-pulling, hair-graying, days of distraction and nothing on the page, I will persevere. The promise of what's waiting at the end is what keeps me going when my well seems dry.

I just hope my son has stopped crying by now and started enjoying his morning at camp. Sheesh, I'll pick him up in two hours now. Which means I only have an hour and a half to finish this post, write book four and paint a new cover for book three before I must leave for the store and get promised treats for my kids. Promises, I tell you. Not bribery, but Hope. I'm sure any good parent would do the same.

Hope is a lot like faith for me. My faith in God keeps me going when I'm low on gas. I know there's something better, something after, just around the corner. Sort of like a lollipop and the promise of the Aquarium. My son knows Mommy will keep her promises to him. He'll soon learn he can get through anything because there is someone out there who loves him unconditionally and will give him hope for something better.

So what are you hoping for today? Find something to hope for. Hold onto that hope. It'll keep you going through anything.

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Nicole Seitz is the author of TROUBLE THE WATER and THE SPIRIT OF SWEETGRASS. Her next book, A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS, is due out in March 2009. Today, she is busy writing her fourth novel and painting the cover for book number three. Contact her through her website: http://www.nicoleseitz.com/

I read six books this past week. That is what summer means to me, time to read. Though this season no longer means the lazy days of summer, I some how find the time to read. It's just that important.

When I was a child, I would hop on my blue Schwinn bicycle and peddle to the local Eureka Carnegie Library. It was cool inside especially in the basement where all the children's books were shelved. I would spend hours perusing the shelves, maybe for the latest Nancy Drew. I was on a mission to read the entire series or maybe I would be brave and go upstairs as I was reading all the Louisa May Alcott books. If I found an author I liked, I liked to read their entire body of work. I still do. Back home I'd trek with my basket full of books. I could hardly wait until I could get up in my tree house to read my latest acquisition.

Recently I read Doug Crandell's "The Flawless Skin of Ugly People" and his latest "Hairdo's of the Mildly Depressed" as my book club, the Pulpwood Queens are having a book launch for "Hairdo's". What struck me about Doug's work was his ability to write such truths about subjects that were not lifestyles of the rich and famous or beautiful, but real stories about real people that made you really think about what truth and beauty really mean. I love to read books written in perspectives I have never read of before. I also am driven to want to read man's books who took a dermatologist on tour with him for his first book. I wonder what he will take on him with book tour for "Hairdo's". Hmmm, maybe me? For those who are first reading this blog, I am a hairdresser/bookseller, NOT mildly depressed!

I also just finished reading "The Shack" by William P. Young, mostly because my Sunday School teacher, Bill Smith, gave it to me as he wanted to know what I thought of the book. I gave him "God for President: A Parable About the Power of Love" by Lisa Venable as I wanted to know the same, what he thought of it. Now I just finished "Sins of a Father: The True Story of Kitty Chappell" as she is coming in for the Christian and Inspirational Book Festival I run called BOOKS ALIVE! as a fundraiser for my church's mission and outreach programs. Kitty stopped by my shop to meet me this summer and give me her books. I thank God that authors take the time to bless my doors. I am always amazed at their stories. All three of these books you cannot put down and again they make you think and then of course, make you can't wait to discuss and share them with others.

I read Sarah Bird's "How Perfect is That" then immediately became engrossed in Janelle Brown's "All We Ever Wanted Was Everything". Both books to me are cautionary tales of the times we live in, too much, too fast, too soon, and then the price to pay. Both books made me madder than a wet hen when I had to put them down to do a client's hair in my hair salon/book store, Beauty and the Book. But then again, I just do what I always do after I begin their cut, color, or style, I rave on and on about the particular book I am reading until they break down to buy a copy. I have yet to have someone write or call me later to tell me I made a big mistake. Most of the time, I receive an email or call telling me they loved the book I recommended. What else could I suggest they read!

I wept as I began Kathi Appelt's "The Underground", a children's chapter book about an abandoned cat and her friendship with an abused dog. Suddenly, I was ten years old again reading "Old Yeller", "Bristleface", "Rascal", and "Mr. Popper's Penguins. I hadn't cried over a book like that since Jack died in the Little House in the Prairie books or even when I read as an adult Willie Morris's "My Dog Skip". Kathi is a storyteller extraorginaire. You must share this with your kiddos.

I loved Robert LeLeux's memoir of growing up in East Texas, "memoirs of a beautiful boy" and Jacque Couvillion's "The Chicken Dance" set on an island off the coast of south Louisiana. You may have never heard of either of these southern authors, but you better start reading as I predict big things for both of these authors!

At this moment I have seven stacks of books each a yard high and nearly as many books bags crammed with books setting by my wingbacked chair for me to read this summer. A dauntless task, hardly, I can barely stand to wait, just like I do for the first taste summer blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and tomatoes. A virtual feast is set before me. I plan to dine in style with long, cool glasses of iced minted tea, lemonade, and bowls of ice cream. With gas prices keeping us closer to home, there is no excuse for not taking a great trip by reading a good book. So far I've been to California, New York, North Carolina, to name a few and yes, even East Texas with my arm chair traveling of reading books. My NEW Head Queen of The Pulpwood Queens' of Anchorage, Alaska just sent me a treasure trove of Alaska goodies including a book and magazines on Alaska. I can't wait to read and travel there, I can almost imagine the arctic summer air.

Denise Hamilton's new book arrived, "The Last Embrace" and I'm taken back to old Hollywood. A subject matter that fascinates me beyond reason and just received Doris Day's new biography, "Doris Day: The Untold Story of the Girl Next Door" by David Kaufman of which I have just started and is it good. I had just finished, "The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaugher's Search for Home" by Bibi Gaston which I found one of the most fascinating and intriguing reads ever.

Now wait, all those books do not add up to six books that I've read in the past week, they add up too.... Well, I never was good with math which reminds me of my favorite quote of all time, "The world is made up of stories, not atoms." to quote Muriel Rukheyser. Whatever they do add up to, all I know is that the correct answer is reading. Make this a reading summer, visit your local library or favorite bookstore. All the money you save in gas will profit you by learning more about others and even help you make some self-discoveries. The best trip I ever made was in reading a good book. I can share my adventure with my Pulpwood Queens Book Club members and YOU! Happy Tales to YOU and I would love to hear of your great book adventures too this summer. The best reads I have ever read have come from the recommendations of my reading friends. I would never have read "Memoirs of a Geisha" by Arthur Golden or "The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver or "The Glass Castle" by Jeanette Walls if it had not been for authors, readers, and friends like you sharing their great reads. I hope you like mine and I look forward to hearing from you too!

Tiara wearing and book sharing,Kathy L. PatrickFounder of the Pulpwood Queens Book Clubs and Author of "The Pulpwood Queens' Tiara Wearing, Book Sharing Guide to Life", Grand Central Publishinghttp://www.pulpwoodqueen.com/http://www.beautyandthebook.com/

They Spell "Krispy" "Crispy" up North, and other oddities

By Sarah Smiley, www.SarahSmiley.com

From the way my southern grandmother has always talked, I thought men in blue uniforms with rifles might be waiting for me when I crossed the Mason-Dixon line on my way to Maine last week. It turns out, however, that the "Mason-Dixon" line is not a line at all. I looked for a bright red mark drawn across the earth, or warning signs that read "Go back Southerner," but I never saw either. I knew by instinct though that I should keep myself, as best I could, from saying "y'all." Just in case.

The only thing bearing any resemblance to a Mason-Dixon line, in my estimation, was long stretches of toll booths with people working in them who wanted my life savings. Apparently, in the North, you pay for everything, including the privilege to drive on public roads that have very few exits. In the South, blue reflective signs as big as small outhouses adorn the sides of highways to help drivers know which exits have a Waffle House, and which ones don't (answer: not many). You can also find Krispy Kreme, the Piggly Wiggly, and Whataburger this way.

Not only does the North not have many exit signs, they also don't seem to use "Ks" for "Cs." I've spent almost my entire marriage in Florida, where every time my husband sees an exit for Whataburger, he feels compelled to say "WHAT-a-BURGER," just like the commercials. When he joins me in the North later this fall, he might be slightly disappointed to realize that yelling "FOOD" and "GAS," as these things are called on the northern exit signs, won't have the same irritating effect.

But never mind, for a moment, what stores and restaurants the North may have, once you get on the many turnpikes north of Maryland, you might never get off. We have something similar to this -- something you enter and can't get back out of, all while continuously emptying your wallet for reasons you're not sure of -- in the South, but we call them "casinos." I got on a turnpike in New Jersey, shortly before Owen, 5, announced his urgent need to find a bathroom, and many miles later, I was in New York, still on the turnpike, still unable to find an exit.

This is right around the time that I was introduced to the concept of "speeding traffic." In the South, "traffic" means that your car doesn't move. In New York, "traffic" often means that hundreds of cars, all within a few inches of one another, travel not slower, but faster than the speed limit. And no one cares that you didn't realize the exit you were looking for is on the left, not right, until you are a quarter of a mile in front of it. Smiling out the window with a gosh-I-didn't-even-know expression doesn't help. In fact, I suspected that my Florida license plates were hurting my chances of getting across the 100-lane turnpike.

My grandmother has always, however unintentionally, made me think that northerners would be unfriendly. "Aloof" was a word I learned and associated with the North early in life. Yet on that road going through New York City, I learned otherwise. New Yorkers are definitely glad to speak to you, even if it means yelling through their closed car windows and making gestures with their fingers.

Then we entered Maine. It was as if we had crossed from one room in a house to another, and someone had just shut off all the lights in front of us. The smog and city lights of New York was far behind us, and even though we were still technically on a turnpike, there was only one other car in my rear view mirror. OK, so it was 1 o'clock in the morning, but still. The world literally seemed to slow back down. Giant fir trees flanked the sides of the road, and the stars shone down like tiny pin-pricks in the black sky.

At a gas station near Brunswick, I stopped to get a drink. I was thirty-three cents short. "Ah, don't worry about it," the clerk said. "It's on me."

"For real?" I said, still digging through my purse.

"What's thirty-three cents?" she laughed. "Go on now. Get on the road."

Farther down the turnpike, I came to the last toll booth I would pass through before getting to Bangor.

"How much father to Bangor?" I asked the attendant.

"About 88 miles," he said.

I took my change and got ready to drive off again. But the man stopped me.

"You going to be alright, miss?" he said.

I smiled and thanked him for caring. "Yes," I said. "I think I'm going to be just fine."

Old Pick-up's and Love By River Jordan

Mr. Wonderful would rather have just about anything than for me to give him a card. He's not too big on flowers either. Go figure. Our men, for the most part, are just wired a little different. Now, if the men are truly from the south, real honest to goodness, good old boys, what makes them tick is a whole lot different. Okay, it some aspects. Case in point. Husband used to have an old Ford pick-up truck. Now, just because I say old it doesn't mean that it's a backfiring rust bucket. That's just imagery wrongly grasped by people from other parts of the country who don't have a pick-up education. No, this truck was shiny and beautiful! Might have been one of the reasons I married him but then, I'm a car girl, a truck girl, an everything in between with wheels on the road girl, and I'll have to tell you about that later. Back to the truck.

Where love is concerned or something more commonly called wild attraction without logic or reason, the commercials tell us it's really very simple. A blond in a convertible. Hands down. Blonde, Convertible, - just add Man. Well, I got news for blondes and convertibles and it amounts to one little hyphenated word - pick-up.For reasons that escape me, perhaps my car being in the shop, I had once borrowed my husband's old pick-up to use for a week. Now when I say pick-up also don't imagine those sleek newbie's with the sticker price glue still reflected in the mirror. Nada. We're talking big tires, ladder racks, big old cruising bumper and Three (that's 3) on the column. In all my growing up young and single days, growing up on that beach where boys from Alabama and Georgia lived and breathed to get down and cruise searching for girls, girls, girls on the Gulf Coast, in all my days of driving anything, I have NEVER received the attention that I did from driving that Ford.

We're talking multiple men rubbernecking and missing green lights. And to watch a women even from a distance push in the clutch and shift on the column - oh my! You would have thought I was three Hollywood it girls and Maxim babes rolled into one. Now mind you, I was just in the right place - the south - and in the right package - not being one. I wouldn't suggest to a woman who was husband hunting in Boston to try this trick. But a word of advice for a woman down south that might be looking for love - Baby, go out and get you a PICK-UP TRUCK. Then get behind the wheel, put those sunglasses on and drive. As my Aunt Leaner used to say, "I ain't stupid and if I'm lying I'm dying." Just you wait and see what develops. Then get back to me with the stories.

Hoping you find love in all the best places - most of all right there in the middle of your heart.

Guest Blogger Keetha DePriest Reed

I live in Winona, Mississippi, a small town in north central Mississippi. I’ve lived here for three years and I love it; crepe myrtles line the main street that leads downtown, there’s a Christmas parade, and the whole town turns out for the Homecoming game each year. I love it, understand.

Yet when anyone asks where I live, I answer – without thinking – “I live in Winona, but I grew up in the Delta.”

I’m not sure why I feel it necessary to qualify a simple answer with that detail. Where I live now is a whole thirty miles from the Delta; the two places are hardly worlds apart.

Yet the Mississippi Delta is storied and legend, for both good and bad reasons. Some stories are exaggerated, others aren’t. I relate to and associate with it fundamentally. It’s a part of me in ways I don’t fully understand.

I doubt I’m unique in feeling this way. Belzoni, Mississippi, where I was raised, is home. It brings to mind those things that home means: ice tinkling in glasses on a weeknight at twilight as my mother gets dinner on the table, the way the elementary school classrooms smelled when the heat came on for the first time each year, windy afternoons in early spring in the backyard, playing kickball and looking for four leaf clovers, seeing the carved pumpkin on our front porch, Saturday drives to Greenville, the nearest town with a shopping mall, the school gym during pep rallies, long chlorine-soaked days in a swimming pool, discovering dried locust husks on the oak tree in the front yard, coming out the front door and walking to the church half a block away, roller skating on the front porch, chicken and dumplings for Sunday dinner, every Christmas morning, every first day of school.

The town where I grew up in the 80s is typical of many small towns of its day; cars left unlocked, children rode bikes all over town until the streetlights came on, scandalous gossip among the Baptist ladies would scarcely raise an eyebrow now, and a department store downtown and drug stores on two corners.

When I think of my hometown, I picture the downtown street, the Western Auto store where I bought jump ropes in elementary school, the newspaper office where I had cards printed for the Homecoming mums the Student Council sold, Miss Minnie’s Dance School, where I took lessons for more than ten years.

In many ways, my adopted hometown reminds of my childhood one. Some of the streets here are wide and lined with tall old oak trees. People are friendly and interested, as is typical of most small towns.

I’m raising a son here and it feels like home. Yet when I dream, they are often dreams filled with a weird mélange childhood and high school, of the yellow clapboard house on Pecan Street in that small Delta town. Those dreams make me happy and sad at the same time and they seem to give me plenty of material for writing.

Born and raised in the Mississippi Delta, Keetha DePriest Reed grew upin a family big on get-togethers, reunions, and food. She is theauthor of Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from Growing UpSouthern and More Culinary Kudzu: Recollections & Recipes from GrowingUp Southern. Keetha is a founding member of the Mississippi WritersGuild and is working on a novel.http://writekudzu.blogspot.com/http://kudzukitchen.blogspot.com/http://www.pecanst.com/