What I learned from football . . . the good, the bad, and the ugly It was an overcast November day in 1947. My dad Mack Mulkey, a student on the G.I. Bill at Southern Methodist University, was [...]

“Papa’s words ringing in my ears, son, you got to get tighter with your tears.” As I listened to these lyrics of the Willie Nelson song, Old Fords and a Natural Stone, I was transported [...]

In so many ways, Donald Trump represents the death rattle of an old America, and it’s loud and it’s violent. When Eddie Glaude Jr. shared these words in 2021 — quoted in I Alone Can Fix It: [...]

It was 1993, and I had been making my weekly 30-mile trek from my little cottage in the hills outside Austin, Texas to Bastrop Federal Correctional Institute for the better part of a year. Each [...]

I like to think of myself as a self-aware kind of guy—attuned to my emotions, noticing them as they arose, acknowledging them, and letting them pass. But this past year, with the death and [...]

Early one morning in May of 1992, I awoke with the realization that I was no longer tethered to any geographic location. My daughter was about to graduate from college, and my commitment to pay [...]

Fifty-seven years ago, I traveled from Tennessee to Washington, D.C. to join a protest against the war in Vietnam. My housing had been prearranged; the group I was traveling with would be staying [...]

My latest conspiracy theory, with some wishful thinking thrown in. The fix is in, folks. A cabal of oligarchs, including Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, and Peter Thiel, has decided that Trump, with [...]

I’ve had fun putting this playlist together—43 songs starting with my childhood favorite—Roy Rogers’ “Happy Trails” and concluding with David LaMotte’s wonderful [...]

My brother Butch and our pal Rusty were roommates and students at MTSU in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in the fall of 1968, working part-time at the local Samsonite manufacturing plant. I was living [...]