Browsing Archive: December, 2012

NO EASY ANSWERS...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, December 20, 2012, In : Opinion 

“I suppose you’ll be writing about that horrible school shooting just like everybody else,” my old friend Julian Frye commented when I ran into him unexpectedly during a trip to the store last Saturday.


I responded with a gloomy shrug of my shoulders. “To be honest, I really haven’t decided yet,” I said. “I mean, yeah, definitely feel like I should say something, even if it turns out to be nothing more than a catharsis for my own sorrow and anger and frustration. But nothing th...


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RESPONDING TO AN IDIOT...

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, December 7, 2012, In : Opinion 

I was just reading the "Comments" section of an online news article about this fiscal cliff business when some ding-a-ling started ranting about how "you @#$!" liberals don't know anything about Pearl Harbor" and tried to make the argument that liberals are a bunch of military-hating traitors who ought to be rounded up and punished for being traitors to the country.


Setting aside for a moment the fact that I'm still trying to figure out what Pearl Harbor and the fiscal cliff have to do with ...


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I'M DREAMING OF A RED PLANET

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, December 6, 2012, In : Pop Culture 

(Yes, that's really me in the lower left corner... as I looked back in January of 1982.)


 

Perhaps it should have come as no surprise that this week’s report by NASA, regarding the data collected by the Mars rover Curiosity, was do doggone anti-climactic in light of all the Internet buzz and media hoopla that ensued after scientist John Grotzinger announced that the findings were destined “for the history books.” 


It’s hard to live up to that kind of advance publicity. Just ask Kim Kar...


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A CHRISTMAS FUNNY...

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, December 3, 2012, In : Holiday 

The following is one of my all-time favorite humorous Christmas stories, which I first heard told by George Grove of the Kingston Trio on their Christmas concert album a few years back:

Three men all die on Christmas Eve and meet St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St, Peter tells them that, since it is Christmas Eve, he can't let them pass through unless they can present some sort of item associated with the holiday.


The first man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cigarette lighter. He ligh...


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About Me


John Allen Small John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996). Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.) John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something. In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems. He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.

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