NB: If you celebrated Thanksgiving this week, I hope it was everything you wanted it to be. Because of the holidays, today's piece is short and was a bit delayed. - HH

It was a simple board and batten building, uninsulated, with a tin roof and a dirt floor, resting on a six-inch-high concrete mudsill. When I knew it, in the late 1970’s, its owner had been dead for nearly a decade…

One of the things I love about my life is the unlikely relationships I have. I am friends with millionaires and people who live under bridges, with snake handling preachers and high church bishops, with atheists and holly rollers, with PhD's and elementary school dropouts, with folks who are NYT bestselling authors and folk who are illiterate.

And thanks to a very surreal decade of my life, I know lots of public…

NB: This is NOT the essay I promised you every Saturday morning. But the election and it's aftermath has disrupted my life and productivity, and I owe you a newsletter, and it was much easier to write, so I did that. We will return to regular programing next week. - HH

Hey y'all, 

I do not pretend to know the partisan affiliations of those who read my work. In fact, since…

It’s 6:45 AM, and I’m on the front porch, drinking my coffee as the sky in the east turns pink, and slowly the golden sun peeks over the horizon. Cars whir by on the highway at the end of the block, their headlights a blur, and the sunrise is mostly hidden by the garish Chili’s restaurant sign. I take a deep breath and the exhaust fumes burn my lungs. I hear no…

It’s not a large house – barely 1000 square feet. It was built in the early 1950’s, in a new subdivision being marketed to Black professionals. The neighbors were professors, merchants, and at least one poet – Margaret Walker lived in the only two-story house on the block, but on the other end of the street. 

Like many houses from that era, it is in all ways smaller than houses being built…

The school was in an old building that had begun life at the turn of the last century as a private home, but whose most notable use was as Dr. Wright's Sanitarium for the drug and alcohol addicted and those suffering “minor nervous disorders.”  In 1962, 15 years before I would set foot upon the campus, William Faulkner would die in what would become my first-grade classroom. That I learned to write…

Note: This is the Member's Only newsletter that you get monthly because you support my work as a part of my membership team. Thanks for that.  It's more behind the scenes, both business and personally. I sometimes say things in this format I wouldn't put on the open internet, so I would appreciate if you kept this off the record. - HH


Hey y'all,

First, some admin: There will be…

In the small rural North Mississippi community of my childhood, there was one unpardonable sin, one transgression that was unforgivable, and that was to act above your station. We did not have much, but we were a proud people, and how dare you act like you were better than we were just because you had more money, or were born elsewhere, or had been taught to pronounce the consonants at the end…

The deadline of publishing each week means I write more, which was one of the goals. But since Saturday comes whether I'm done or not, sometimes it feels rushed, like this one does for me. I will explore this topic in more depth later, with more length and a much better ending. Thanks for going along the creative process with me. - HH

It was the first house I would own, a…

In the Jewish scriptures, we are told the story of a man named Abram. He is promised by his God that he will have unheard-of levels of wealth, that his descendants would outnumber the stars in the sky, and that he would be abundantly blessed. 

Abram was told that he was being blessed in this way in order that through him, all the world would be blessed. 

I want to introduce you…

Mr. Doc was a tall man, especially for his time, with broad shoulders and a strong back, somewhat stooped with age. He was retired, and while it’s convenient shorthand to call him a retired farmer, he had really been a bit of everything - a well digger, a truck farmer, and a small-time cattleman. Like most folks that lived around me when I was growing up, he did what he needed to…

Hi there - this week my wife had a procedure at the hospital, and this essay was a side effect. This week's essay is a bit longer than I normally go, but I didn't have time to write it shorter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. As a reminder, I am now sending an original, unpublished essay each week as bonus content for my members. I hope you like it! - HH

The receptionist at the…

Hi y’all, 

I know I owe y’all a lot of personal updates, but I wanted to let you know about an upcoming additional perk you will get as a member of my patronage team: A free original weekly essay, sent out each Saturday morning. 

This will hopefully solve two problems for me: 

The first is that I need to write more, and if I don’t have a deadline as an incentive, it…

Hey y'all, 
Man, my life has been weird the last few weeks because of my day job. Actually, it's just been weird in general. But that's a story for another day. 

The reason I'm writing you right now is that in last month's Member's Only email, I said I was blocking an hour off tonight for a drop in Zoom call. I put it on my calendar and then, honestly, forgot about…

Hey y’all. 

In the closing words of one of my favorite novels, Gilead, the protagonist , on his deathbed, writes these words for his young son to read after his death:

That’s all I’ve ever wanted: To be useful. In fact, I…

Note: This is the Member's Only newsletter that you get monthly because you support my work as a part of my membership team. Thanks for that.  It's more behind the scenes, both business and personally. I sometimes say things in this format I wouldn't put on the open internet, so I would appreciate if you kept this one off the record. - HH

Hey y'all, 

It’s Monday morning, and I’m…