I don't remember when I didn't make up stories. I wasn't a liar except for a few lies told during childhood, but I guess it could be argued that fiction writers are creative liars. We write the lies that people want to read, at least some do, knowing up front that what they are reading is false. We just let readers know upfront; this is fiction, a creative lie. I think I was inspired to write from a very early age. After my mother died when I was a little boy, the one co

Karlyle Tomms - A Personal Story Yesterday, my aunt was laid to rest. Cold Arkansas wind sawed at our ears as we stood beside the grave site, an omen of snow to fall later. There, beneath a sagging cedar, by a rusted wire fence, she was put down next to the man who had abandoned her with five children and a hundred dollars to her name. Faithful to him always, she kept her commitment, ‘Till death do us part,’ and kept it long after he departed. She nev

By Karlyle Tomms ~ "10-year-old calls 911 while trapped with Uvalde shooter as law enforcement stands outside..." Watching things unfold in Uvalde, Texas, watching politicians scramble to exploit the event for political gain, and realizing the horrific grief and human suffering, that results from “man’s inhumanity to man”, I find myself wondering if anyone is remembering to have compassion for the families who went through the unbearable grief of losing a child, a br

By Karlyle Tomms It seems like this has been a season of tragedy, both for the country and in our personal lives, because many of us have also lost loved ones to natural causes. However, nothing can compare to the grief that comes when a life is cut short unnecessarily, especially the life of a child in whom we saw such hope and promise. When it came to the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, I was doing okay with it until I saw footage of parents being blocked from entering the school

A Commentary on Sex, Sexual Abuse, Society, Spirituality and Sexual Orientation PREFACE: I wrote this after having some communication with an old friend who had been sexually abused as a child and who was having confusion about his sexual feelings, the source of his feelings, and was judging his feelings as well as himself for having his feelings. I have titled it “Everything Under the Rainbow” because of the old saying that great variety is “everything under the sun”. The va

Okay, Gillette does a commercial which chastises men for bad behavior, a shadow of the “#MeToo” movement. Some men react, “I don’t need Gillette to lecture me on masculinity.” Many men are not used to being called to task. They are used to being dominant and in control, not necessarily of themselves. Call them on their stuff, and it pisses them off because no one is supposed to call them on their stuff, not even another man. The term “Toxic Masculinity” gets tossed around, bu

I labored over whether to write this for a couple of months. I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I wanted to say, or in the final edit, that I had said everything that I needed to say. Some of the things I have said reveal more of me than even some of my closest personal friends have known. I struggled over whether to write this at all. I struggled with how much I might reveal and how I have felt about revealing these things to everyone at this point. However, like many, I am gi

WHITE FEAR I first wrote this in 2017; this is an updated version of the previous blog post. I was raised in the 1960s on a farm about ten miles out of a north Arkansas town, and the town had a population of less than two thousand. Any town larger than about 40 minutes away, and that town had a population of about six to eight thousand at the time. The region was rural, scrubland with more trees and rocks than pasture, and it was almost entirely white. As

By Karlyle Tomms She eloped across the county line at fourteen, lied about her age, and married a man almost twice her age. He probably would have been arrested in today's world, but in 1923, it was a different world for women and children, at least slightly different. She came back and told her Pa, “I ran off and got married. What do you think of that?” He said, “I think you have made your bed, and you are gonna lie in it.” It was not an easy bed to lie in. No sooner had

On the day my father died, I found a black feather on my way back from lunch, standing straight up in the grass as though it had been planted there. Having been taught by some of my metaphysically minded friends that feathers are angel signs, I picked them up and took them back to my office. The feather was old and tattered. The bristles were frayed and barely holding together. A black feather can symbolize death, or the finishing of a chapter in our lives. Within an hour, m

Moments of Peace Karlyle Tomms 7/30/16 Pinnacle Mountain stands alone along the Arkansas River, and from the I-630 bridge appears like a burned-out volcano in the distance. It isn’t. It takes about two or three hours to climb the mountain from the park at the base to the boulder-covered peak. The trails become ever steeper near the top, and climbing over boulders is required to complete the journey. Once there, the views are specta

I grew up with guns. My grandpa had rifles and shotguns hanging on the walls. They were propped on ten penny nails driven just far enough into the paneling to support the weapon, and keep it out of the reach of a small child. Every year rural schools actually let the boys off a day for deer season. They were likely to skip school to go hunting anyway. In the late 1960’s, the girls protested that they got no day off. So the schools gave the girls a day closer to Christmas for

By Karlyle Tomms Three words came to mind the first time I saw her –weird, strange, and goofy. She was older than the rest of us. She had at least ten, perhaps twenty, years on us, but there she stood among college students ranging in age from eighteen to twenty-one. Her hair was auburn, almost more red than brown, and she wore a floral bandanna wrapped around her head, tied beneath her hair at the back. Her hair was straight and neck-length, falling thick over the folds

The eastern Ozarks of Arkansas are not quite as grand as those to the west. Here, the Ozark Mountains begin to roll gradually into the Mississippi Delta. There are still lakes, lush forests, and plenty of rocks of almost every type. However, there are more flat pastures that are better suited to growing crops like cotton, corn, and hay. When I was a child, my grandparents still raised cotton, and some of my earliest memories are of working in the cotton fields. There was

I understand hate. I have felt rage so intense that it incites to kill. I have felt seething, malignant resentment so extreme that it...

(NOTE: I have been surprised by the number of people (All white people so far) who have completely missed the point of this essay. This is not a justification for using the word, especially in the context of demeaning people. A white person singing the lyrics of a rap song that contains the word "nigger" may or may not be using the word with prejudice. There are other contexts in which someone who is not black can use the word with absolutely no prejudice intended. The point

Yesterday, my aunt was laid to rest. Cold Arkansas wind sawed at our ears as we stood beside the grave site, an omen of snow to fall later. There, beneath a sagging cedar, by a rusted wire fence, she was put down next to the man who had abandoned her with five children and a hundred dollars to her name. Faithful to him always, she kept her commitment, ‘Till death do us part,’ and kept it long after he departed. She never thought to remarry. She made one commitment only and d

Let’s get this straight. The entire human race is crazy. Every single one of us is insane right down to the very last one. There are just varying degrees of crazy, ranging from Charles Manson or Hitler at one end, to the Dalai Lama or the Pope at the other end. Most of us ramble about somewhere in the middle. Sometimes we get it right, but sometimes we get it wrong. Nobody—not even the Dalai Lama or the Pope—gets it all right all the time. So, before we go any further, cut

A glass of wine, a magazine, and the porch swing in warm weather, back against a pillow, wind chimes, and hummingbirds. This is my definition of heaven. I don't remember seeing them as a child, even though I grew up on a small farm in the Ozark hills where hummingbirds are plentiful. You might think I would have seen at least one during my eighteen years on that farm, but I never did. I remember seeing documentaries about them on TV and wishing I could see one. I looked for

New Year—new beginnings. Everyone thinks about this transition every year as one year rolls over into the other. Goals and resolutions are made, sometimes seriously, most often half-heartedly. Each year, we vow to start anew, set out on a different course in life, and yet the course seems to remain the same, with only minor adjustments to the trajectory. Here we go again. What course have you planned for this year? We ask each other about the resolutions, the goals, t