I'm not sure exactly why I agreed to do a guest spot for this column, as Toni has asked. You'll notice she still gets the byline, and I get squat, as the saying goes. But since I consented, allow me to introduce myself. I am The Little Wolf, or "The Six-Year-Old-Raised-By-Wolves", if you will, residing within the very person of our earnest writer---and willfully sabotaging her every attempt at making better health a way of life! BAHhahahahahaha!
Having sung with, written for, and often fronted Shekinah Glory Ministry to now, Tarver felt it was time to venture forth on a solo project; entering Billboard's Top Gospel Album chart at #16 with "Draw Nearer" certainly wasn't a bad way to start. Phil Tarver has come far since pouring his energies into what he terms the "club band, garage band thing" in his native Chicago. Tarver is the son of Poplar Bluff resident Gerald Davis, and the grandson of area sports great Lonnie Davis, an esteemed figure in the athletic and business life of Poplar Bluff from the 1950s until his death in May of 1986. This past fall Phil Tarver released his solo-debut CD, a no-holds-barred praise
A little over a week ago, I vowed to eat smart; immediately thereafter, as if in a walking dream, I went on a three-day doughnut binge, then followed that up with buckets of barbeque potato chips, and had late-night, Henry-the-Eighth-style dinners throughout the week. I reported my starting weight to have been 137 pounds; now I'm at 138! What happened? OK, so who's bright idea was this, anyway? After one single day on the Lenten quest for bodily improvement...After one single day's walk about town, music spurring me on, the cold pushing me ever forward for what warmth I could generate...I was about ready to hole up in the house and never come out again. Then came the waves of sleet
The tiny gold dolphin dangling from his ear on his return the first summer was just the beginning. He hasn't always been this way; that's part of the conundrum. "I went off to college, and according to my mother, that's when I began losing my 'foundation'," this recent graduate reports. When asked to describe this "foundation", he happily---indeed, proudly---launches into a litany of principles and teachings central to his traditional, deeply religious upbringing here in the Bootheel. They include honesty, industriousness, thrift, regular church attendance, and general social conservatism. The first four apparently presented no problem for him during his years away from home; it's the last of these areas in which, to the dismay of both his
Sorry...did I mention the Gorgeosity Factor here? It was as if he'd escaped from a GQ photo-shoot just to give me directions to the P.O.... I had an East-Asia memory that recently brought a smile to my face, and so I thought I might share it on Valentine's Day. First, the back story: Once upon a time, I lived in the then-Portuguese territory of Macau, across the bay from Hong Kong. Just out of college myself, I taught English at Macau's University of East Asia. But I hopped over to Hong Kong regularly to hang out with friends, eat Western fast food, shop, see movies, do mailings (faster transit from HK), and generally stretch my legs in a bigger set
