Chrissie’s Blog
Cleaning Out
We recently spent almost a week trying to get started cleaning out Russ’ parents’ house in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago. When my mom passed away, we didn’t have to do this. The doublewide on the God-forsaken Hill had been abandoned and was my sister Sarah’s...
Can You Feel It
On November 1, a long-time dream came true. I got to see the remaining Jacksons (sans Jermaine and Randy) perform a show at the Hard Rock Casino in Cincinnati, Ohio. I had thought that Jermaine would be there, so I was initially a little disappointed, but once the...
On Being Tired
"She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired.” – Virginia Woolf"She did not want to move, or to speak. She wanted to rest, to lean, to dream. She felt very tired.” – Virginia Woolf I feel this recently, all the way...
35th High School Class Reunion
After months of preparations and excited planning, the 35th Class Reunion of the Class of 1989 met in Tazewell, Virginia, over the weekend, some members coming from a far away as Alabama (Jeff Price), Arkansas (Robbie Yost), and Florida (Kenny Lowe). Some class...
INTERVIEW: Linda Hooper and Sharon Shadrick
What do eighth graders in a small Appalachian town in south-central Tennessee know about the Holocaust? More than you’d imagine. I just got back from Whitwell, TN, about thirty-five minutes northwest of Chattanooga, where I interviewed co-authors Linda Hooper and...
Thousand-Year Floods
This is the second thousand-year flood I have skirted. The first was two years ago when I was trapped for a few hours at the Hindman Settlement School in Hindman, KY, at the Appalachian Writers Workshop. I didn’t leave my safe place high on the hill in Preece to go...