Mitch Clarke's column
|
|
To your mother, you never, ever become grown In "Beloved," the 1987 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, author Toni Morrison says this about mothers: "Grown don't mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What's that suppose to mean? In my heart it don't mean a thing." I reread this novel recently, and that quote reminded me of my mother, bless her heart, who sometimes seems to forget that I'm 44 and have been out of the house for a few years, seemingly thinking I'm still her little boy. I cannot leave her physical presence ... |
|
|
Listening to things that go bump in the night It's 4:15 as I type this. That's 4:15 in the blessed a.m. I can't sleep. I hate it when I can't sleep. Sleep is good. When I can't sleep at night, I spend the next day walking around in a fog, hoping to find a comfortable spot to lie down and take a nap. About three years ago, I had a serious bout of sleeplessness. My doctor made me do a sleep study. That's where you spend a night in the hospital so that doctors can monitor your sleeping patterns. The way they do ... |
|
|
The perk of this job is all the chicken you can eat I spent part of my Saturday in a small room at the old courthouse with six other men eating chicken. We started about 11 a.m., ate continuously for about 90 minutes, took a short break, and kept going until after 2 p.m. Even in the poultry capital of the world, that's a lot of chicken to eat. How I came be to be eating chicken in a room full of strangers is that a friend of mine, who happened to be one of the organizers of the 4th Annual Spring Chicken Festival, asked if I'd like to be a judge ... |
|
|
Fear of flying is no way to get where you're going I bought airplane tickets this week for a trip we're taking later this year to Tempe, Ariz., and it started the inevitable conversation with some friends about how they won't fly. We're flying out for the Georgia-Arizona State football game in September. I asked a couple I know that goes to a lot of games if they were planning to go, as well. "No," the wife said. Turns out she's afraid of flying. Terrified of flying might be a better description. She believes that if God had intended for human beings to fly, he never would have created the unlimited-mileage ... |
|
|
No worries here; reading this column won't kill you The latest news story about something that could kill me has led me to a decision. I'm no longer going to read news stories about things that could kill me. You probably saw the story I'm referring to in the paper last week. According to researchers, plastic water bottles are breaking down and releasing toxins into the water, and it's especially dangerous if you reuse the bottle, which is what I often do. People kept telling me I needed to drink more water. So I gave in. Gave up the Coca-Colas and started drinking several 16-ounce bottles of water every ... |
|
|
'M' my name is Mitch, but who cares? I never really thought about the significance my initials play in my life, but apparently a group of researchers has. A new study says we tend to gravitate - often unconsciously - toward things both good and bad that begin with one of our initials. That's why, the study suggests, baseball player Ken Griffey Jr. had a higher-than-average strikeout rate. Ken begins with a "K," which is baseball's shorthand for strikeouts. The study in the journal Psychological Science and reported in Newsweek says "name-letter preference" makes us more likely to buy brands that begin with our initial. They also say ... |
|
|
Do you know the McMuffin man? A man named Herb Peterson died this week at the age of 89. I doubt you've ever heard of him before, but there's no question that you know his most famous creation, the Egg McMuffin at McDonald's. A big fan of eggs Benedict, Peterson was trying desperately to develop a line of breakfast foods for the McDonald's franchise he owned in California. He wanted something that, like the rest of the Micky D menu, people could get on the go and eat with their fingers. What he came up with in the early 1970s was the now famous egg sandwich, ... |
|
|
It doesn’t take much effort to show national anthem respect A woman sitting a few rows in front of us at a Georgia football game several years ago snatched a young man's baseball cap off his head and tossed it on the ground in front of him when he failed to remove the cap for the national anthem. After the Redcoat Band finished playing, the man picked up his hat and turned to confront the woman. But she didn't back down. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she said. "I'm sure your parents taught you better." I've thought about this incident a ... |
