Author Archives: rogerbarbee

The word Father is used most often as a noun, as in Ralph is my father. It is also used in religious references. However, the word is most interesting to me when used as a verb, as in I will father my children. It also can be used in a participle,  as in “To fatherContinue reading “To Verb or To Noun”

Going out our front door, my wife encountered the rat snake on our stoop, at the hinge side of our entrance. She, being an admirer of snakes, quietly closed the door and came to share his presence with me. Every muscle under its black skin was tense from her presence, and there seemed to beContinue reading “One Small Bird”

One of my high school wrestling teammates followed his father into the carpentry trade. Jimmy has told me how, over the years of his craft, he has occasionally worked in a house that his father built. Now, his father was a builder from older days which means that he did almost every part involved inContinue reading “The Forty-Five Degree Cut”

A few days ago I  asked my friend Mike to “Google” God Bless the USA Bible and read an article about the forthcoming Bible. After he did, we discussed this new edition of the Bible. He said, “I  don’t see anything wrong with it, Roger.” Our conversation has caused me to think about the specialtyContinue reading “The Written Word”

On Memorial Day, 2021 I read an article about the WW I War Memorial in Durham, NC, and it caused me to remember a WW I memorial in Magdalen College, Oxford that my friend Druin showed me.  Located underneath the ground floor arch of Founder’s Tower of Magdalen College, the stone memorial lists the namesContinue reading “Memorials”

An internet server in the Charlotte area airs a commercial touting the advantages it offers consumers. After the usual hype with an attractive person talking, the over voice says (to paraphrase), “It’s time to get what you deserve.” My hardback dictionary states that “deserve”  means “to be worth of” or “merit.” That first meaning hasContinue reading “What You Deserve Went Missing”

The morning broke full of bird song and sunlight breaking through the pine trees at the lake. Not even the interstate’s distant noise interrupted the beginning of this new day. Watching the new day arrive, I remembered some particular words of my mother. Whenever one of her children would complain about the heat or theContinue reading “Maggie”

The camellia bloomed first; the azaleas came next and are now empty of their bright, white flowers; as are the dogwood trees; and the rich purple flowers of the rhododendron and irises at the gate are limp imposters of their former selves. But the hydrangeas form small bubble-like features that will soon burst into ballsContinue reading “Cycles”

The pre-Romantic poet William Blake wrote “The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.” That quotation from the English mystic carries much wisdom and is more complex than it first appears because a nest, a web, and a friendship are, while necessary for a life of quality, also fragile and perhaps dangerous.            Continue reading “A Nest, A Web, A Friendship”

In his fine memoir, The Old Man and the Boy, Robert Ruark recounts his grandfather’s explanation of aging: “ A man don’t start to learn until he’s about forty; and when he hits fifty, he’s learned all he’s going to learn. After that he can sort of lay back and enjoy what he’s learned, andContinue reading “Creating Her Own Room”