Picture this: a beautiful spring afternoon, a lovely breeze sweeping through the pines, friends gathering, ice chests and picnic baskets full of goodies, and one of your favorite bands playing their best tunes at an outdoor amphitheater.

The smallness of my hometown, Evergreen, Alabama, meant a lack of separation. The poor and the wealthy, the educated and the ignorant, the sane and crazy, and the sick and healthy were thrown together in a tiny, rural piece of geography.

“Chicago of the South.” That’s how it was described to me when my friend from college, Tom Lavender, first told me about his hometown of Boligee, Alabama. It had everything to become a booming metropolis, a river, a railroad, and later, an Interstate highway.

I am in the middle of 6 acres of beautiful woods, with Red Gully Creek meandering through the property. There are lots of little children here, climbing, digging, building, and playing while teachers ask questions to foster creativity.

David Cooper has written and published an entertaining book called The Laundry Man. It is a fun tale that weaves through a fictional Mississippi family that draws on David’s life and experiences growing up Southern.

January is a cold, wet reality check after the festive atmosphere of the holiday season and is often ranked as the worst month of the year to no one’s surprise. Whether you are working off the holiday excesses, working on a new year’s resolution, or getting back in the swing of work / school, the short, dreary days can dampen anyone’s spirits.

Side gigs are fun. It usually means you’ve found something to add to your daily responsibilities that's worth the time and effort. In the case of Amber and Hunter Harris, both chefs working in the restaurant industry, launching a monthly supper club is a test of bigger things to come.

This week, I met two 13-year-old boys who have started a business called Bay Boys Lure Company. Thomas Gross and Bennett Lieb are 7th graders at Bayside Academy and are on their way to creating a very successful business: conceived, funded, manufactured, and marketed entirely by themselves. Of course, because they are so young, moms and dads are advisors, yet mothers, Kim Gross and Ashley Lieb, clearly state that these entrepreneurs are on their own.