Creative nonfiction works, mostly regarding my experiences and memory
Rubber Joe
I’ve struggled to keep meaningful relationships with other men. Most men I’ve been close to hurt me in ways most men hurt others. I’ve always been sensitive and most men take it upon themselves to toughen people like me up. They compared me to women or gays because, to them, being female or liking men…
Baldwin’s 1962 Letter Teaching Us Today
Baldwin’s letter from 1962 could’ve been written yesterday and that’s the problem.
Brothers
I eventually learned you can choose your family. That loyalty doesn’t require blood-bonds. Love doesn’t require birthing. And, those who think they own you—whether blood or not—tend to hurt you the most. I’ve learned you can trust folks you don’t share a name with. And how some of those who do don’t deserve your time.
Fontana
The village is the reason I am a historian. It may even be the reason I am a writer. It got to a point for me where I couldn’t just visit the Smokies. I had to know more and tell others.
The Queen of North Street
We all die a little bit every day. Some people, like my grandmother, commit suicide slowly. By the time I came around she was nearly gone. My whole life she struggled to breathe. I don’t remember what I called her, but her name was Doris. Maybe I called her grandma. I never called her granny.…
Daisy Dukes and Combat Boots
I once hit a kid in the face with a basketball because he called my mom a bitch. I was eight. It was instinct. Later, I cried. Nowadays I’d never intentionally hurt somebody, certainly not for words, no matter how insulting. At my core, I’m not violent. When anyone argues around me a knot forms…
Like a Frenzied Fish: A Southerner Meets Carpathia
In 2016, I had the extraordinary opportunity to travel to Romania for a joint conference between Appalachian and Carpathian scholars. The following is a telling of my journey.
My Father, the Idiot
My father passed on April 13, 2018. The first draft of this was written the night I arrived in Tampa, out of fear, anger, sadness, and confusion.
New Male, New Normal
Just like the rise of the nerds in the 90s and 00s vindicated every glasses-wearing child, the me-too movement, as an unintended and frankly unnecessary side-effect, has allowed those of us who were once taunted with feminine and queer terms of abuse to feel slightly more comfortable.
Changes
I suppose everybody lives several lives. For me, I change on a semi-annual basis. The cycle began when I was a boy. Since then I’ve wanted to be many things. After watching Michael Jackson perform, I wanted to be a singer. I watched Hee-Haw every night whilst playing my Little Tykes drum kit, dreaming of my…
But, but, BUT…
What are we to do with a president who has no qualms about aggressively engaging half our nation? There is a marked difference between liberals and conservatives in this country that has nothing to do with particular beliefs, ethics, or choice in television programming. When a certain segment of the population of the United States…
Drink More Ovaltine
This is a vain piece. I can hear fireworks going off a few blocks down the road, as if a quarrelsome fool was shooting at Saint Nick, penance for never delivering a coveted toy all those years ago. They began at midnight while I drank eggnog and watched A Christmas Story under Christmas tree light, while Chloe,…
Dichotomies are Sexy
This is about this past year. It is about the election results and the fear and uncertainty felt by both sides of the aisle throughout the process. It is my stab at trying to understand it all. Those who know me should not be surprised that I am a liberal. But I have always taken…
Cracks in the Pavement
I am a child of broken people. I come from broken dreams, busted jars of over-processed cheese, tears, and psychotic accusations slung to and fro by people who had me to fill a void in their lives. Between my father’s anger and my mother’s psychosis, being a kid was hard to maintain. There are no…
Goodbye Athens, Hello Somewhere Else?
Rejection. No matter what people say, no matter the compliments, the WTF’s, the tears, outrage, and sorrow, not getting accepted to my first-choice graduate program felt like rejection. I found out late last week that U.G.A. declined my application–a throat punch. My wife and I love Athens more than we can love another place. The…
Bruises that Won’t Heal: On Derby
The hardest part about discovering a passion, life goal, or purpose is not letting it control you. Life, ironically, steals vivacity. There is a rancid reality that accompanies the pursuit of academia. Most professors warned me. I am trying to heed their advice. There are cures. Hemingway and Faulkner famously drank away their demons. Millions…
Requiem: A Word I Finally Know the Meaning Of
Don’t get me wrong, I love words. They are powerful tools for education and emotionalism. Writing is an art-form. Words are the medium. I recently took the GRE. The experience made me question my love of words. Some words, such as “Agog,” seemed to defy the standard Greek or Latin root transcription. Mostly, it seemed…
Southerner
Heat, sweat, rednecks, and slaves. Beer cans floating on molasses rivers. Preachers throwing bibles at demons, deacons visiting widows. Mint Juleps, porch swings, pines, and red clay. Big trucks, battle flags, country tunes, and white lightning. Such is the South, to some. I was born in Tampa, Florida, southern by geography not culture. My grandfather…
The Curse
Becoming a specialist creates a curse. An engineer cannot stop trying to figure out how things work. A psychologist cannot have an average conversation. A historian cannot live entirely in the present, a condition which annoys my friends and family to no end. Because much of history is bleak, darkness follows me. Knowing what most…
The Process: Grad School, GRE, and the next chapter
It may be cliche, but I view my life through chapters. I feel like an objective reader, an outsider looking in on my own life. Sometimes I feel pride and accomplishment. Mostly, I feel nervous. I feel anxiety, fear, and excitement when a chapter is near its close. Endings and beginnings terrify me. Now you know…
History is Complicated
I shivered more than ever before. Clutching a drenched sleeping bag. Lying in soggy clothes, next to three trembling men. The wind howled like a locomotive, swirled around our tent, and pounded on the vinyl walls. I drifted through several states, none of which were sleep. It was last October. I was a junior at…
A Cold, Rainy Way
It’s cold. In fact, it’s freezing. I checked my “spanking new” iPhone and the app told me it would be 60 degrees today. It lied. My feet are soaked. My face is tingling with abrasion and my books are moist. My shoes, my socks, my backpack, my umbrella, the papers within my backpack, my books,…
Mistakes
Sometimes mistakes lead to a change in the route home. Sometimes you pass on foot what you intended to drive by. As a person who cherishes routine and the expected, these times can be hopelessly frustrating. However, such a time happened to me while heading home last Thursday. I have a five minute window of…
Wilderness and Passion
There is something wild in each of us. In everything that breathes there is something to tame. Children eat with their hands first. They crawl before they walk. They spit before they speak. They scream before they write. If it were natural for these activities to reverse in order it would be so. If these,…
Much of Nature
When I drive down the freeway I often watch the hills as they roll on either side of me. Rather than focusing on their present, barren, condition my imagination soars with ideas of how they must have been. Instead of forty foot billboards I see hundred foot Chestnuts. I see oaks as big as houses…
Wilderness Artificiality
The other day my wife and I went for a run. The challenge was to run six miles outside. It was a rare feat for both of us. We chose to run in downtown Jefferson, Georgia. We started near a park which has a Boy Scouts home on the premises. This park is a tribute…
Wild, Wonderful
Last night Nature’s progression became an inconvenience for man. A storm moved in. As the skies filled with moisture, turning every shade of gray, and replaced the sun-streaked blue and white landscape from the early afternoon with a dark tumultuous atmosphere in the evening, I drove my cantankerous automobile over limbs and leaves, which swirled…
Constant Life and Beauty
We are the projection of the perpetuated ideals of our parents, teachers, culture, religion, nation, and fears. Our view of nature is an aspect of the projection. It is programmable. Like a universal remote control, with the correct codes, our intended purpose can be fulfilled. It is no more natural for me to walk under…
A Magnificent Oak
It is the most magnificent oak tree I have ever seen. On the route from my home to the gym is a homestead featuring a wooden house painted yellow with a very old brick fireplace. Directly in front of the house is a stump at least nine feet in diameter. I want to stop each…
Graceful Hunter
It leaped in front of my car from a small patch of forest on my left. It was in flight. This was no common bird. Its large and broad wings moved slowly with great strength, creating flight and bearing grace unlike any I have seen. At first, I thought it was a vulture because I…
A Flock of Small Birds
The clouds were grey but not imposing. The wind was aimless and strong but not unbearable. The sound of a flagpole ringing as its tether slammed against metal sounded like a ship’s call to port. In the foreground, citizens passed in their cars heading home. In the background, the roar of a highway was ocean-like…
A Backyard Wilderness
Some say wilderness is a concept. Wilderness is an ideal rather than a place. It is a projection of our inner desires. There are hundreds of definitions. Whether you know it or not, you have your own. Wilderness means something to you because A Wilderness matters to you. As a child, the wilderness was a giant grapefruit…
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Anthony Sadler 