Going Home to Jesus

By Man Martin




Kathy Patrick

Karin Gillespie

When I was seven years old, my mother told me that my dog Skipper had “gone home to Jesus.” Although no one explained this at the time, I have since realized that the Lord’s calling Skipper home had something to do with his penchant for biting strangers on the ankle without provocation or warning. Since that day, much in my life has gone home to Jesus: friends – human and animal – family members, personal possessions, youth, hair. This is the way of the world we live in: everything, no matter how dear, is only ours temporarily. Life isn’t a gift; it’s a loan.


Now it’s time to send “A Good Blog is Hard to Find” home to Jesus.

A sad duty, but not without some compensating pleasure. There are so many wonderful writers who have written for this blog, I cannot thank them all for fear of leaving someone out. Many of them I have met at book festivals around the South. I will say that writers are a special and wonderful breed, Southern writers in particular, and writers of this blog most of all. Unfailingly, the bloggers I have met have not merely talented, but gracious, warm, and generous. It is a pleasure to be associated with them. I have to give a special thanks to Karin Gillepie who started this all up, and to Kathy Patrick, founder and grand pooh-bah of the Pulpwood Queens who took the tiller when Peggy stepped down.

Thanks to them, to all of our writers, and to you, our readers.

And so, farewell.

Somewhere in heaven, I know, are five cell phones I’ve dropped in swimming pools, bathtubs and toilets – the Plymouth Voyager whose radiator cracked en route to Destin – about two thousand pairs of reading glasses I’ve purchased at the Dollar Store and later stepped on or mislaid – my dog Skipper – and my Granny Barr.

Who’s reading this now.

Man Martin, the author of Days of the Endless Corvette and Paradise Dogs, has many accomplishments in which to take pride, one of which will always be this blog.