We have recently added the following articles to our website. These articles were originally published in the May 9, 2012 print edition of The Real Story. Simply click on the article title to be re-directed to the appropriate page on our website. Ask Meagan! – Topic: Bi-Racial Relationship and Unsupportive Family Consumer Corner: Thai-riffic Cuisine [...]

A printable version of this brochure is available by clicking the following link: Tennessee Williams Tribute Brochure 2012 Special to The Real Story

We have recently added the following articles to our website. These articles were originally published in the May 9, 2012 print edition of The Real Story. Simply click on the article title to be re-directed to the appropriate page on our website. America and the War on Women Ask Meagan!: Discrimination in the Workplace Consumer [...]

Recent articles have focused on the economic consequences of declining birth rates and restrictive immigration policy, and on the more far-reaching changes in society caused by a distortion of the normal age distribution. However, they do not discuss the more fundamental issue underlying the persistent and increasingly xenophobic demands for cultural purity – the insistence [...]

On Thursday, April 19, 2012, Columbus native and former Lynyrd Skynyrd band member Ean Evans will be remembered at the Riverwalk. A small gathering will take place from 6-8pm, with music and people sharing their memories of Evans. Evans’ widow, Eva, asks that everyone pay it forward and perform some small positive action in Evans’ [...]

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in our April 4, 2012 print edition. When do you plan for the future, by looking to the past?  What type of business epitomizes the saying “Everything old is new, again”? When the business in question is a vintage clothing boutique! The Attic, Columbus’ only boutique dealing exclusively [...]

Check out this cool and FREE event! Special to The Real Story

What a great opportunity, and it’s FREE! Please note that, although this is a FREE event, tickets must be reserved and picked up in advance. Special to The Real Story

It’s true that politics isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, my first love. In fact, love isn’t really the right word, in the slightest sense of the idea. But today, I turned to something a little more easy-going: music. Having found myself recovering from what I believe to be a couple of chicken patties [...]

World-famous playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi on March 26, 1911.  Born Thomas Lanier Williams III, “Tennessee” went on to write plays, short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays, and a volume of memoirs. His career spanned the 1930s until his death on February 25, 1983. His work included A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a [...]

In an excellent article in the Washington Post honoring the late James Q. Wilson, George Will reflects on Wilson’s views of freedom, the role of government, and the importance of encouraging a “moral sense”. “New Deal liberalism, Wilson said, was concerned with who got what, when, where and how; since the 1960s, liberalism has been concerned with [...]

Dear Editor, I could not leave Columbus, Mississippi without saying a heartfelt thank you to the marvelous community that welcomed us New Yorker theater people from Orpheus Descending with such gracious hospitality. We were all overwhelmed by the beauty of your fair city, the sumptuous architecture, and the fascinating history of this birthplace of America’s [...]

A fascinating opinion piece by David Brooks in the February 21, 2012 New York Times describes the rise of the individual, and concludes that this is ultimately a good thing because it allows for the maximization of talent. “People want more space to develop their own individual talents. They want more flexibility to explore their own [...]

A good friend gave me a book entitled The Shakespeare Miscellany by David Crystal, a linguist and author about language; and his son, Ben, a Shakespearean actor.  Together, they put assembled a collection of miscellaneous items about Shakespeare; everything from a comparison of the number of lines per character to a review of English history [...]

Tickets to the professional performances of Tennessee Williams’ Orpheus Descending are still available! Performances are scheduled for February 23-25 (Thursday-Saturday), starting at 7pm, and will take place at the Artz Performance/Conference Center (602 College Street | Columbus). Tickets for the special Thursday preview performance are $5.00 for high school and college students, teachers, and senior [...]

Circumstances can, from time to time, hold us for a moment against our wills.  Frustration can ensue, but, ultimately, we know that we will be able to go on with our lives, as planned.  There are rare instances, however, when the comfort of this certainty disappears entirely.  It is the moment that one becomes confined [...]

Special to The Real Story Columbus has been selected to premiere a three-city tour of Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending, February 23, 24, and 25. The announcement was made on February 2, 2012, by the Tennessee Williams Tribute (TWT) Volunteer Committee and First United Methodist Church. The live, professional performances will be presented in the [...]

On my first trip to the Mississippi, looking over the vast, flowing white cotton fields; and after reading Mississippi state history, I was amazed at the story of plantation owners, like Faulkner’s fictional Thomas Sutpen, who came from the East to realize great wealth from the rich bottom land of the Delta.  Many of these [...]

Special to The Real Story Harvey Myrick, Founder of Grilling On The River, has announced today that he is stepping down as the Executive Director of this annual event.   As a member of the Columbus Convention & Visitors Bureau (CCVB) Board, Harvey has expressed his concerns to the Grilling On The River Board regarding the perceived conflict of interest [...]

The Real Story Staff Report Some of Columbus’ finest undiscovered talent entertained an enthusiastic crowd at Words & Music: An Evening of Spoken Word and Songs, this past Friday night, at Cafe Aromas. This open mic night event featured four musician/vocalists and two spoken word artists. Songs that were performed spanned the genres of Country, [...]

 Charles Dickens was born on Feb. 7, 1812, and died June 9, 1870. His obituary in The New York Times began, “The death of Mr. Charles Dickens creates a greater gap in English literature than the loss of any other one man could have occasioned. He was incomparably the greatest novelist of his time.” A [...]

Ron Parlato, Feature Columnist and Writer for The Real Story print and online editions, is coming to Columbus to teach a course entitled Famous Couples from Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams: But Was It Love? at the Mississippi University for Women, Life Enrichment Program (LEP). Ron has a long association with Columbus and has visited a [...]

“New Friends”:  An exhibit of our art dolls by Adele Elliott Opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 2, 2012, 5:30pm – 7:30pm, at Renee Reedy Studio (101 5th Street South | Columbus, MS — below Cafe on Main) FREE and open to the public Refreshments will be served, provided in part by Cafe [...]

In 1974 my wife and I travelled from Washington, DC to La Paz, Bolivia by land.  We drove our own car through the American South and through Mexico to Guatemala City.  From there we travelled by bus, train, and colectivo taxi the rest of the way.  The entire trip took over two months. Travel across the altiplano in beat-up, [...]

An article in the January 16, 2012 Washington Post debunks the myth of ‘self esteem’.  After years of praising young children for the most insignificant achievement or progress in an attempt to build confidence, eagerness, and a desire to learn, educators are now realizing their mistake and finally accepting what common sense has told all [...]

In an article in last Sunday’s (1.15.12) New York Times, the author decries the spread of teamwork, collective thinking, and other forms of what she calls ‘groupthink’. SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement [...]

I have written before about government invasion of personal privacy.  Perhaps naively, I assumed that the routine tracking of social media by government would not be allowed.  I knew and was concerned about the routine sale of personal information shared on social media to private companies, but the news that whatever I wrote on Facebook [...]

The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream” Speech during the Freedom March delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation. Five score years ago, a great American, in [...]

I recently wrote a post on the plays of the early O’Neill – Desire Under The Elms and Mourning Becomes Electra – which I described as operatic and overly melodramatic.  They were both a combination of Aida and Grand Guignol – outrageous characters in hopelessly entangled family relationships, complicated by incest, and dissolved by bloody murders. The operatic quality of Desire led Edward Thomas [...]