So I decided to update the homepage today instead of working on a blog post. New year, new aesthetics. And a new “tagline” that better outlines all my topics of discussion.

In case anyone is interested though, here’s an explanation of each of the new pictures.

This is the Chapel of Memories at Mississippi State University. I graduated from MSU back in 2008 and got married in this chapel in 2009. I lived in the dormitory next door back in the day and the bell tower saved me from oversleeping on more than one occasion. The building itself was built from the bricks salvaged from Old Main Dormitory after it burned. Old Main (originally just “the main dormitory building”) was the first dorm on campus (built in 1880) and, after four expansions, was the largest college dorm in the country. Four stories high with more than 500 rooms, it housed over 1,500 students at a time. It burned on January 22, 1959 (sixty years ago this month!). As a tribute to all that was lost, bricks were salvaged from the rubble and used to build a campus chapel. It was dubbed the Chapel of Memories and, along with the bell tower, sits in the main part of campus, diagonal from the Colvard Student Union.

This is from Eudora Welty’s house. She’s a famous writer from Mississippi. Her nieces once complained that whenever they visited her, they had to move stacks of books just to have a place to sit down. I don’t see the problem with that. Also, if you ever think your family is a little crazy, give The Ponder Heart a read. I read it in my Southern Literature class in high school and it has influenced my own writing voice in several ways. Also, it makes me giggle.

A magnolia. The state flower of Mississippi. Most people think of magnolia trees as smaller trees used to decorate a landscape. However, they can grow to be quite enormous given the right conditions. In fact, when I was very young my family lived out on a farm. The semi-circle driveway that came in off the glorified turn row leading to our house curved around a magnolia tree that was over fifty feet tall. As far as I know, it’s still there, but I haven’t been back in many, many years. I used to love to climb that tree and remember my biological mother, God rest her soul, yelling at me to get down before I broke my neck or got snake bit.

Kudzu, aka The Vine that Ate the South. You cannot kill this stuff, and it covers everything it touches. When the world ends and all of us are gone, cockroaches and kudzu will keep Keith Richards company. But seriously, if ever they figure out how to make useful products out of kudzu to replace plastics, it’ll save the planet. It grows so fast that “sustainability” will never be an issue.

So that’s it. Those are my big updates. A tagline and some pictures. It sounds so simple that I won’t tell you how long it took me. Let’s pretend it was quick.