I am inviting you to pop on over to Plugger Publishing and check out some great stories from Garret Mathews. Garret has a bit of history with The Dew and we reviewed his book back in 2012, Barking Signals (Badly) During Goldwater. He now has compiled his years of writing and columns into one site for the enjoyment of all. Take a few minutes and check it out. _____________________________________________________________
"Favorites" is a collection of 80-some columns written during my Evansville days (1987-2011). Included are pieces on a 91-year-old woman who won't stop bootlegging whiskey, a young man who gets paid for being mosquito bait and the truth about the hit tune, "Louie, Louie."
For "Coming Together,"
I interview more than 40 men and women who were active in the
civil rights movement in the South during the mid-1960s. I used this
material as background for my play about the movement, "Jubilee in the
Rear View Mirror." For our pre-show, I interviewed three
African-Americans in Evansville and Greenwood, Miss.,
who talk about living under segregation. "Coming Together" has
links to both 30-minute videos. The site also features educational
information that I use when presenting programs at high schools."Columnists: While We're Still Around" is a salute to a once-proud profession that's now pretty much kaput. It looks back on that golden age when subscribers couldn't wait for the newspaper to bang against their front doors so they could read the latest musings of their daily scribe. "Columnists" contains pieces from 27 men and women whose work I admire to include Mark Patinkin, Colman McCarthy, Donna Britt, Dave Lieber, the late Mike Harden and, yes, me. I want to preserve their talent so it can be appreciated by future
generations.
"Folks Are Talking" recalls my time at the Bluefield, W. Va., Daily Telegraph with a focus on stories written between 1976 and 1983. You'll meet an early organizer for the United Mine Workers, a pair of coal camp baseball players, a collector of silent-screen western movie posters, survivors of coal mine explosions, a cockfighter, a man who lobs pop bottles out of a homemade cannon and a woman who eats her lunch while skinning muskrats.