Carmen K. Sisson | Page 10 of 23 | Making sense of the South, one story at a time.

If you want to find the South, ask directions from a Southerner.

If you want to find the people, meet them where they live.

Because the South is more than hurricanes, heat, and humidity ...

The South is more than sweet tea, antebellum homes, and the Civil War ...

Every story a writer could ever want to tell is here, buried beneath the soil.

If you want to find the South, ask directions from a Southerner.

There is something extravagant and wild about what they have to say — snakes on the roof of a car, swamps, a delta, sweat, the smell of sea, buzz of an air conditioner, Coca-Cola ... ~ Natalie Goldberg

If you want to find the people, meet them where they live.

Being Southern isn't talking with an accent ... or rocking on a porch while drinking sweet tea, or knowing how to tell a good story. It's how you were brought up ... family (blood kin or not) is sacred ... And food, along with college football, is darn near a religion. ~ Jan Norris

Because the South is more than hurricanes, heat, and humidity ...

Summer in the Deep South is not only a season, a climate — it's a dimension. Floating in it, one must be either proud or submerged. ~ Eugene Walter

The South is more than sweet tea, antebellum homes, and the Civil War ...

How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home. ~ William Faulkner

Every story a writer could ever want to tell is here, buried beneath the soil.

And after 30 years of covering the South, I'm just scratching the surface. Faulkner said: "To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi." Consider this an introduction.

Engagement is not a buzzword — it's a survival skill.

If you're looking for a writer to aggregate content, regurgitate press releases, or deify pundits, I'm not the one. If you're looking for a writer to spew statistics, quote jargon, and bill by the hour, well, that's not me either.

If you want to connect with people, we should talk.

If you want to know how people feel, what they think, and who they are, I might be your writer. If you want a seasoned journalist who prefers to be in the field instead of behind a desk, someone equally skilled with both pen and camera, someone who keeps a suitcase packed and notebook ready, I might be your writer. If you want a journalist who is a native Southerner — who understands its people, knows its terrain, remembers its past and cares about its future — I might be your writer.

Because if it's people you want to reach, I'm all in. And if you've got a story, you've got my interest. Email me today.

A Georgia church tries drive-in worship

A few vehicles dot the parking lot of New Hope Methodist Church in suburban Atlanta, but there’s no sound except the rumble of idling motors. Slow rain becomes a torrent, blowing in wide sheets, obscuring the pastor standing on the church steps as he delivers his sermon. Drivers flick their windshield wipers to life and stare straight ahead. They won’t leave their steel cocoons any time soon. They won’t need to: The sermon booms from their radios like Carrie Underwood.

How one Southern church forges unity through voice

Liberty Grove, established in 1835, is the type of church typically associated with Sacred Harp. The church interior is unadorned. Bare pine walls. Plain metal fans and naked bulbs dotting the pine ceiling. Worshippers scattered among straight pine pews in uneven clusters, their hands rising and falling in 4/4 rhythm, down on the first beat, up on the third. Feet keep time as well.

One town uses the arts to revive after Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina drew the curtains on the theater, as well as on Bay St. Louis, two and a half years ago. But the arts community refused to let the lights dim, and today they’re helping revive a town in one of the rare success stories of post-Katrina life on the Gulf Coast.

One Alabama weatherman’s crusade to improve tornado safety

“I call him ‘Super Spann’ because he does his best to protect us,” says Olympia Hewitt, a Tuscaloosa County resident who watched in horror Dec. 6, 2000, as Spann stood on-screen – sleeves rolled up, wearing his ever-present suspenders – and warned residents of Bear Creek Trailer Park to seek shelter from a tornado. Eleven people died that day, but residents believe the toll would have been higher without his coverage. “He talks like he’s right there,” Ms. Hewitt adds, “telling you what’s happening.”

After the tornadoes: Rebuilding a campus piece by piece

For a moment, Dockery seems bowed by the sheer enormity, then he squares his shoulders and a faint smile lights his eyes. There were no deaths, and that’s something. A thousand people volunteered to help the very next day, and that’s something, too. Union will rebuild what was destroyed and resume the master plan, more slowly perhaps, but always, always moving forward. “I don’t think we’ve lost hope, and I don’t think we’re Pollyannaish,” he says. “Our deep faith will carry us through.”

Motorcycle ministry: A ‘biker church’ in Texas draws a devoted flock

Motorcycles clog the sidewalk outside, engines idling. Children play tag while burly, tattooed men sit on the front porch, trading stories. If you poke your head inside and peer into the dark recesses, you may still be confused. Chinese lanterns strung from the ceiling cast a soft glow on card tables below. Mothers dole Cheerios to chubby-fisted toddlers. Adults buy soft drinks from “Moose,” a man with Samson biceps. But looks can be deceiving, and stereotypes don’t fly too well at the Hope Fellowship Church, anyway.

In this college course, a focus on homemaking

Seated in a plush chair in the couple’s expansive library, a glass of sweet tea in her hand, she commands respect. Ultimately, this is the message she teaches her students, respect for their husbands and for scripture, which she says trumps everything. Drawing inspiration from Titus 2:5, which exhorts women to love their husbands, love their children, and be “discreet, chaste homemakers,” Mrs. Patterson broaches no apology for the course. “These women are going to be pastors’ wives,” she explains. “They need to know this.”

A young evangelist draws thousands to worship at ‘The Basement’

The music is pounding, buffeting the thrashing bodies from every direction as lasers swirl overhead, first red, then green, then melting into a disorienting synesthesia. This is the hottest ticket in Birmingham right now – Tuesday nights at “The Basement.” It draws nearly 5,000 teenagers a week to dance, sing, and pray. That’s right. Pray.

Longhorn arm of the law

Like all good cowboy stories, this one’s been told and retold, passed down and around, shaped and honed until it shimmers with firelight and the red-orange blaze of a thousand Oklahoma suns. It doesn’t matter if everyone in the room knows the ending. Tommy Morgan’s eyes are bright with merriment, and it’s clear he’s enjoying every minute of this.

“I was at the Tulsa Stockyards when I saw ’em, and my friend said ‘Let’s go over there and I’ll choke the – out of ’em,’ ” the rancher says, demonstrating what his irate buddy would have done to the two guys they suspected had stolen 12 saddles – $18,000 worth – from Mr. Morgan’s barn. “I was yelling, ‘I’ve got ’em, I’ve got ’em,’ flipping through the phone book tryin’ to find someone to call.”

One college’s retreat from big-time sports

It’s a tough crowd, this assembly of silver-haired Southern gentry. But David Pollick surveys his audience coolly, flashes a megawatt smile, and says something you might not expect to a room full of well-heeled college alums: “Anyone who would aspire to be a college president is a lunatic.” No doubt some have wondered about the sanity of Dr. Pollick, the 12th president of Birmingham-Southern College (BSC), who arrived at the school in 2004. Last year, he and the board of trustees decided sports had become too prominent at the private liberal arts college – a controversial stance in a state where people still revere Paul “Bear” Bryant, the legendary University of Alabama football coach, even though he died nearly a quarter century ago.

In Tulsa, a rusty portal to the past

Great road trips, like great movies, require a certain suspension of disbelief, and for 24 hours everyone waited on the edge of their seats, enjoying the ride. By now, much of the world knows the spoiler – the starlet’s shine faded, her throaty purr fell silent, the good guys lost and the villain got the girl. It made no difference. For the people of Tulsa, the journey was the destination anyway, and some of the best parts ended up on the cutting-room floor.

The virtual war family

The war in Iraq may be a half a world away, but in the age of the Internet it’s as close as the flip of a video switch – making it in many ways the most intimate war in history. Using video technology and the Worldwide Web, soldiers are tying into the most private moments back home – weddings, funerals, birthdays. Today’s soldier doesn’t have to wait for a box of brownies: He can see his 4-year-old proudly making them. Some innovative couples have used the technology to get married, renew vows, or choose an insurance carrier. A father saw his daughter learn to tie her shoes. A brother said goodbye to his dying sister. The age of the interlinked war is raising profound questions: Does it boost the morale of soldiers or add to longings for home and divert attention from the task at hand?