Screen Porches and Nice-Nasty

Today was the second Feather Circle day. It was great. They are still warming up, but "oh joy, joy, jubilee!"

I have chosen lines from many of the student's writing to put up on the wall in the classroom.

After nervously reading my writing that was composed at 8:15 this morning my students told me that I should be an author. It made me feel less crappy for waiting until the last second. This was my second time participating in this assignment. My favorite memory was one of my mother forcing a Morning Glory to open before the sun had risen so I could see how beautiful the flower was. Writing helps you not forget. I got a good mama.

On to my babies...read them all. It is worth it. Promise.

“I am from the honey inside the Honey Suckle plant which I ate day after day.”

“I grew up in a green house with scraggly walls that accounted for many of my childhood cuts.”

“I am an urban child.”

“I love the smallness. I love the closeness. It’s that Southern hospitality that makes me.”

“I am from a British woman who married a Texas man.”


“I am from a huge Jewish family that eats too much and is way too loud.”

“A diversity of religions
Quakers and their oats
Jews and their bagels
Christians and their chocolate Easter rabbits.”

“I’m from the pasture with the little yellow tin-roofed shed.”


“I am the Georgia peach, in a house full of New York apples.”


“When I leave, the city lights beckon me home.”

“Ancient shell-pink bricks are bathed with a breath of salty sea wind. Gnarled live oaks, cascading with curling Spanish moss. Sandy bicycles bumping over cobblestones in the twilight…my first memories of home.”

“I am Charles Gresham, fighting the Battle of the Bulge as a sergeant and a tank commander in the US Army during WWII. I witnessed my own men being torn apart by machine gun fire and murdered by Nazi spies in the dead of night.”

“From the food I eat: Legume, Lambi, Griot, Sauce Pois, Diri et poist, to the language I speak. I am a Haitian Sensation.”

“I have cayenne pepper in my blood and the Mississippi River running through my veins.”

“I am a peapple. A wonderful mix between a New York apple and a Georgia peach.”


“I come from the alarm is a rooster at 7 o’clock in the morning…I come from the dust. I come from Trejo Barranco.”

“You see a place full of fine Southern tradition,
Mixed with Modern ideas
And luxurious details of life.
A house raised by humanism,
Based on human rights and equality.
Based on doing what is right."


“I am split between biscuits and gravy and Pepsi.
Between the civil rights movement
And coalmine cave-ins –
A melting pot of hope and change.”


“My family crests are embedded in Irish history.”

“I’m from an intersection of two culture, traditions, beliefs, and ways of life.”


“Comfy slippers and an old stuffed rabbit named Tuscan.”


“A young mind being molded.”


“Butter yellow house of 14th Avenue. Warm and Inviting. Smells like cinnamon.”


“A book lays open on this cover, it’s pages turning themselves from the gust of the ceiling fan. The cicadas and grasshoppers chirp outside. The faint smell of bleach comes from the sheets, freshly cleaned.”


“I am from sourdough bread and crescent rolls at Thanksgiving.”


“I’m from a place that’s found in a book full of magic carpet rides or wizard’s duels. I’m from a place where anything is possible.”

“Where I’m from there are traffic locked streets, peaches and fairs. I’m from Atlanta; the Dirty South.”

“I am from the sun that shines bright. The one everyone sees every morning and at night it gives hope to the hopeless, and dreams to the sleepless, and keeps a smile on every face.”

“I am from the land of chicken biscuits, waffles, and coke. Surrounded by peanuts and peaches. Where great athletes have come and competed. Where the term “rush hour” is an understatement.”


“I am from the old dirt roads of South Africa where walking was not an obstacle, but a way of life."


“I am from a place where salt water lingers in the air and where you can feel wind tangle your hair as you step outside.”


“I am from the Chanel No. 5 that my mother always wears.”


“It’s bright outside, but not from the sunlight. The city lights are shining on the sheets of the bed. Atlanta, GA, and it’s everything that I thought.”

“Where you are from is what you picture in your mind when someone says “home.”