Jimmy Reed

[em]Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher. This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled [strong]The Jaybird Tales[/strong]. Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).[/em]

Most Recent Articles by Jimmy Reed:

Our Own Babylon

Around 2600 years ago, hard times fell upon the Israelites. After a successful siege, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar II force-marched thousands from their homeland to servitude in Babylonia.

- Saturday, November 20, 2010

Take Tytler

Like television, Internet has become ubiquitous and iniquitous, especially for those gullible enough to gobble up cyber gossip.

- Monday, November 15, 2010

A Modest Supposal

In “A Modest Proposal,” English satirist Jonathan Swift takes aim at government officials despised as much then as now: stupid social engineers and blundering bureaucrats.

- Thursday, November 4, 2010

Imaginary Voters

Would a woman join an organization whose acronym is AWFUL — Adipose Women Fasting Until Lean? If so, she wouldn’t sport an acronymic bumper sticker. Would anyone join ALIVE — the Associated League of Imaginary Voters Everywhere? How could they, being imaginary?

- Sunday, October 17, 2010

New Narcissus

America is polarizing into a new two-party state — socialists and non-socialists — that will be devoid of the stabilizing checks-and-balances in the former Republican-Democrat two-party system.

- Sunday, September 26, 2010

Managing Anger Management

Last week, I was called on the carpet. My boss runs a tight ship, and, following his terse “Shut the door” order, I learned how tight.

- Monday, September 13, 2010

Such A Candidate

As a quasi-retired, semi-employed sexagenarian schoolteacher leering apprehensively at the big Seven Zero, I won’t ever reach a level of affluence that will condemn me to that one percent of money earners who pay forty percent of all income taxes Uncle Sam levies so that he can care for nephews and nieces who pay no taxes — approximately one of every two working people.

- Sunday, September 12, 2010

America’s Achilles Heel

Recently, a civic organization asked me to be the guest speaker during their weekly luncheon. My ego being what it is, I accepted, even though final examinations were in progress at the community college where I teach.

- Monday, September 6, 2010

I Hope They Starve

Members of the Arnold family (not their real name) never have a kind word to say about Mississippi. But they live in Mississippi. They never have a kind word to say about the South … but they live in the South. In fact, they never have anything kind to say about America, but they live in America.

- Saturday, September 4, 2010

The “S” Word

I believe life is a continuous learning process, so a few years ago I drove Loretta — my Dodge pickup with more horsepower than Fords or Chevrolets — to a nearby university campus, listening contentedly as she ingested dinosaur-derived fuel and belched its aftertaste melodiously through dual exhausts. I had an appointment with a graduate school functionary to discuss furthering my education.

- Sunday, August 29, 2010

Tolerating The Intolerable

Recently, a friend’s joke made me laugh, and not laugh: Developers sought city council approval to build a huge edifice covering most of a city block. With turrets at all corners and blaring outside entertainment systems, it would also provide parking for several hundred cars. After the council’s denial, the developers reapplied, identified the building as a mosque, and received immediate permission to build.

- Monday, August 23, 2010

Congressional Gormandizers

Because words with multiple syllables aren’t compatible with text messaging — used constantly by young people — I fear that my freshman composition students are unknowingly reverting back to a monosyllabic communication method not far removed from the grunts and gesticulations of their caveman ancestors. To combat this trend, I include a list of vocabulary words in my newsletter, e-mailed to them weekly. 

- Sunday, August 15, 2010

Willingness To Fight

If only peace weren’t short-lived; if only history hasn’t proven it to be a period rest and rearming between wars.

- Saturday, August 14, 2010

Contemporary Cassandra

Troy’s King Priam had everything going his way until Agamemnon gave him a wooden horse concealing a bellyful of Greeks.

- Friday, August 13, 2010

What Does He Know?

My old Army buddy Jake called a few months ago … said he was depressed and needed someone to talk to.

- Friday, August 13, 2010

Brewster Quit Baking

My father hated liars. His worst rebuke of a man’s character was, “He lies when the truth will do.”

- Tuesday, August 10, 2010

On Whose Side Is Our Side?

Once, when I told my dad that the schoolyard terror, Brick Bratton, pushed me down in front of a bunch of giggling girls, he said, “Bullies are bullies as long as they’re allowed to be. What did you do?”

- Monday, August 9, 2010

Consequences

Though he professed neither faith nor disbelief in God, Civil War veteran and famed orator Robert Ingersoll was certain about man’s relationship with nature. “In Nature,” he once said, “there are neither rewards nor punishments: There are consequences.”

- Thursday, August 5, 2010

November 2010

If I’d supported America’s “Dreamer-in-Chief,” as political observer Charles Krauthammer calls him, and had plastered stickers on my truck’s bumper touting the promised hope-and-change hokey (which became instead the exchange of “change” in the gazillions for hopelessness), by now I’d have scraped it off so as not to advertise how badly I was duped in November 2008.

- Wednesday, August 4, 2010