Showing Tag: "day" (Show all posts)

A BIRTHDAY LETTER TO MY GRANDDAUGHTERS

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, June 1, 2023, In : Life 

Dear Zoey and Willow:


I realize that you are both too young at the moment to understand most of what I’m about to tell you. Zoey, after all, won’t celebrate her fifth birthday until late October - and Willow is only a couple of months old now as I write this. (Roughly the same age that your Uncle Josh was when we moved here from Illinois all those years ago, now that I think about it.)


Even so, it occurred to me the other day that now was the right time to write this letter to you - and...


Continue reading ...
 

SAINT PATRICK’S DAY IS ABOUT MORE THAN WEARIN’ GREEN...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, March 17, 2022, In : Reminiscence 

Today, March 17, is Saint Patrick's Day. Which means that it is once agan time for my annual holiday-themed public service announcement:

REAL Irish folks don’t care whether or not you wear green on Saint Patrick’s Day, and they don’t go around pinching those who don’t. So stop it!

I don’t have to wear green every year on March 17, or eat a bowl of corned beef and cabbage, to prove that I’m Irish. My maternal grandmother’s maiden name was Murphy; you just don’t get any more Irish...


Continue reading ...
 

"IF WE ARE EACH FREE TO LIGHT OUR OWN FLAME..."

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, December 22, 2021, In : Commentary 

Well, it's that time of year again.


I refer, of course, to the perpetual hullabaloo that has been raging for a number of years now over the use of the phrase “Happy Holidays.” 


To the best of my memory (which I’ll be the first to admit is quite often questionable at best), the brouhaha began when some well-meaning Christians started voicing their displeasure over the use of “Happy Holidays” by retailers during the gift-buying season. 


Their argument, as I understand it, was that ...


Continue reading ...
 

HOLIDAY EXTRA: FOR ONE FORMER RECRUIT, VETERANS DAY BRINGS ONLY PAIN

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, November 11, 2021, In : Reminiscence 

Like a lot of other Americans, he gets a lump in his throat every year about this time.


Unlike most of them, however, pride has little to do with it.


He hadn't actually wanted to go into the military in the first place. He rebelled against it for a long time, mainly because it had been his parents' idea at a time when he - like all teenagers - spent most of his time thumbing his nose at his parents' ideas. 


It was his life, by golly, and he was going to live it his way... even if it meant ...


Continue reading ...
 

A PATRIOTIC EPIPHANY

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, November 11, 2021, In : Opinion 

It occurred to me today - as I listened to the one embarrassingly over-politicized moment in an otherwise moving and respectful Veterans Day ceremony here in my community - that the thing that makes America possibly the greatest nation on earth is not the things we have already accomplished. 


And it is certainly NOT the status quo. If the past few years have taught me anything, it is that Peter Tork of the Monkees hit the nail on the head when he questioned the validity of the old saying "my...


Continue reading ...
 

DARK DAYS COME, BUT TOMORROW STILL BRINGS HOPE...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 2, 2021, In : Reminiscence 
(My granddaughter, Zoey Romania Small - photo taken by her Uncle Josh, May 8 2021)


All his life he’s heard the stories. 

The stories are all he has, to be honest. They are his only link to those long-ago days. He was there, but he doesn’t remember any of it; he was just a babe, after all. The first of a family’s next generation. A generation which, it was supposed, would have the best of everything this nation - this world - might have to offer.


That was the promise. That was the dream. ...


Continue reading ...
 

SOME WOULD BE SURPRISED I MADE IT THIS FAR...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, In : Reminiscence 


Next Tuesday, June 1, I will observe my 58th birthday.


All right, all together now: “BIIIIIIIIIIIGGG DEAL!”


Well, yeah, for me it actually kind of is a big deal. On a couple of levels.


For one thing, it further puts the lie to a couple of teachers I had back in high school who, for whatever reason, fully expected me to have joined the Choir Invisible long before now. To this day I’m not really sure just why they had me, of all people, pegged for an early demise. But they did.


Maybe it has s...


Continue reading ...
 

ONE HOLIDAY AT A TIME...!

Posted by John Allen Small on Tuesday, November 21, 2017, In : Holiday 
We didn’t have a whole lot of what you might call “hard and fast rules” in the Small household when my younger brothers and I were growing up.

Compared to some of my classmates – especially a couple of fellows I knew whose fathers appeared to run their households like German stalags, and wielded an iron hand even over visitors of all ages who usually left looking shell-shocked - life was actually... well, I hesitate to say that it was relatively cushy, but it definitely could have bee...
Continue reading ...
 

"A STORY A WEEK" NO. 11: TWO-SENTENCE CHRISTMAS STORY

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, December 5, 2013, In : A Story A Week 
(NOTE: My latest entry in the weekly Spohn Challenge project is also the latest in my ongoing efforts at writing two-sentence stories, as per David Gerrold's challenge of a while back...)


"Listen," Little Sally whispered in her baby brother's ear, "I think that's Santa's sleigh I hear."


Just then the roof caved in.


Continue reading ...
 

THE COLUMBUS MYTH

Posted by John Allen Small on Monday, October 14, 2013, In : Opinion 
(Note: The following newspaper column was originally written and published back in 1992 as my contribution to the discussion surrounding the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival in the New World. It generated a lot of response at the time, both pro and con, and I suspect there are folks out there who will still take offense to it today. That's their problem, I guess...)



“The land was ours before we were the land’s…”

When Robert Frost recited this line during President Kennedy’s inau...

Continue reading ...
 

IT'S NOT THE YEARS, IT'S THE MILEAGE

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, May 29, 2013, In : Reminiscence 

This Saturday – with as little fanfare as possible, in spite of all my best efforts to ignore it, and no doubt very much to the surprise of a few childhood friends who I'm sure never thought I'd make it – I will observe the 50th anniversary of my birth.


Note, please, that I did not say I will “celebrate” my birthday. The word just doesn’t seem appropriate somehow to me these days. I've felt that way for a few years now. I can’t really say why.


A friend once suggested that it cou...


Continue reading ...
 

ONE DAY A YEAR IS NOT ENOUGH

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, February 14, 2013, In : Holiday 
Me and Melissa, Valentine's Day, 1980 - Bradley, Illinois.



I don’t remember where I first read it, but I certainly agree with whoever said it: True love does not need a special day.


Please understand before we proceed any further that I do not mean to denigrate Valentine’s Day. Quite the contrary. It’s an important holiday tradition to a great many folks – and not such a bad one at that, as holiday traditions go. Any holiday that includes chocolate as one of its most important acoutre...


Continue reading ...
 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS, ANYWAY...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, October 18, 2012, In : Holiday 
(Artwork by Michael Cho)


Well, we’re still a couple of weeks away from Halloween but apparently some folks are already busy gearing up for the next round in the ongoing battle over how Christmas season greetings should be expressed.


In recent years there’s been a perpetual hullabaloo over use of the phrase “Happy Holidays.” To the best of my memory (which I’ll be the first to admit is sometimes questionable at best), the brouhaha began when some well-meaning Christians starting voic...


Continue reading ...
 

"Egads! He Got Old!"

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, June 1, 2012, In : Life 

For a fellow who today is officially one year away from being a half-century old I'm feeling pretty good in spite of the increasingly creaky joints and graying hair. 

I may not be rich or famous but that doesn't matter to me. I've got a family that loves me (even if they occasionally have trouble tolerating me); I've got friends who seem to accept me as I am and whose kinship means a great deal to me; I've managed to have the career I wanted when I was a kid, and have been relatively successfu...

Continue reading ...
 

CUPID RODE IN ON A BUG THIS YEAR...

Posted by John Allen Small on Friday, February 17, 2012, In : Holiday 

Some time around the start of the new year, while looking at the calendar and making an honest endeavor to plan ahead for certain “special dates” during 2012, I made a point of asking my beloved wife Melissa if there was anything special she wanted me to get her for Valentine’s Day.


“Give me something I don’t really need,” she responded. 


So I gave her the flu.


Okay, that’s not exactly how it happened. I did get the flu last week, and poor Melissa ended up coming down with it...


Continue reading ...
 

LUPERCUS AND THE ART OF MODERN ROMANCE

Posted by John Allen Small on Tuesday, February 14, 2012, In : Holiday 

“It is said that wise men are not affected by women.


“Then there ain’t no wise men in this ‘appy world!”


– Exchange between two of the villain's henchmen in the Doc Savage novel Meteor Menace, originally published march 1934 (Quoted from memory so don't be too rough on me...)


*      *      *


Every February 15th, the ancient Romans used to take part in a fertility ritual known as the Lupercalia, so named in honor of some obscure rustic diety known as Lupercus.


Much later - som...


Continue reading ...
 

You Celebrate Your Way,I'll Celebrate Mine...

Posted by John Allen Small on Thursday, January 12, 2012, In : Pop Culture 
(Now here's a Marx Brothers movie I would have liked to see...)


In spite of my best intentions – not to mention repeated vows that I most certainly will never let it happen again – every now and then I find myself inexorably drawn into online debates about topics that are of interest to me


The latest example occurred just after Christmas, when I became the target of ridicule hurled in my direction by  someone I could only assume is too young to remember a time when personal computers were...


Continue reading ...
 

20 YEARS SURE WENT BY IN A HURRY...

Posted by John Allen Small on Wednesday, June 1, 2011, In : Reminiscence 

Try as I might not to let it get to me, I've been experiencing the occasional pang of nostalgia this week. I suppose that's only to be expected when you find yourself facing the 20th anniversary of your first child's birth.


Joshua Orrin Small was born on June 1, 1991 - 28 years to the day after I was born, as it happens. I've spent the last 20 years telling people that shared birth date was the product of accident, rather than design; I've never been that good at math, after all. What makes ...


Continue reading ...
 
 
blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus

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.

Tags

blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus
 
 
 
 
blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus
blog comments powered by Disqus