TALLADEGA, Ala.— I hit town after lunchtime. I drive around the square. I pass the Ritz Theater marquee. The trading post. Tina’s Homecookin’ Restaurant.

I am looking for Court Street because I am taking a sewing class today. My appointment is at Miss April’s Fashion Girl Sewing Workshop.

I’ve always wanted to learn to sew. When I was a kid, my mother sewed everything. She made our clothes. She even added custom tags to my clothing. The tags read: “Property of Sean Dietrich.”

Mama even started sewing these tags into my underwear. Heaven knows why. I don’t want to meet the man desperate enough to steal another man’s underpants.

Miss April greeted me at the door. Her workshop was outfitted with Singer sewing machines and spools of colored thread. Fun music was playing. The whole place had an energetic, youthful vibe.

“This is a kid hangout,” Miss April says. “Girls come here after school, and I teach them to sew.”

Miss April has been teaching kids to sew for a long time. Sometimes locals buy their daughters

and granddaughters lessons for Christmas. Sometimes underprivileged girls just need something to do with their hands, and anonymous donors make it happen.

The reason Miss April teaches sewing is simple, she explains. “Because nobody knows how to sew anymore.”

Sewing is a disappearing craft in America. In fact, the skill is practically nonexistent.

Fifty years ago approximately 90 percent of U.S. women practiced the skill of sewing. Today it’s around 12 percent.

And the stats get even more dismal. One survey showed that 87 percent of U.S. households own irons, but only 9 percent use them. Another survey showed that one in three Americans can’t do basic household skills such as ironing, sewing buttons, reading laundry tag symbols, or boiling water.

Yes. Boiling water.

So why are these skills disappearing in America? Miss April knows why.

“Because a lot of schools don’t have…

On the 28th anniversary of your suicide I climbed a mountain. Not figuratively. Literally.

I hiked to the top of Mount Cheaha, the way you might have done.

I was in town for a writing gig. Traveling solo. My wife was back home, cleaning up dog poop, giving dog baths, and feeding our dogs so they could continue to make more poop.

I had an entire day to kill. So I checked into the Holiday Inn Express in Talladega. I drove into the undiluted wilderness. And I hiked a mountain.

It was beautiful. Quiet. Nobody around for miles. I arrived at the first overlook, walked to the edge and was overawed.

The world looked like a tiny train model set. Lots of trees. Tiny ribbon-like roadways, cutting through forests. Lakes that looked like puddles.

Cheaha Mountain stands at 2,413 feet above sea level. It is the highest natural point in Alabama. Which means that, at this exact moment, I was standing closer to heaven than anyone else in the Twenty-Second State. Not figuratively, literally.

And I thought of you. I thought about the day you left us. I thought of your red hair. Your freckled skin. And the way you smelled when you would hug me.

You smelled like Speed Stick Musk deodorant. After you died I started wearing your deodorant brand, just so I could smell you all day long.

Then one day, the supermarket quit selling your particular scent. They only sold Speed Stick “Regular,” or Speed Stick “Ocean Surf,” whatever that is. And you were gone forever.

Many years later, I was wandering through a Dollar General when, by chance, I found Speed Stick Musk on a shelf. I didn’t even know they still made it.

I bought it. When I got to the parking lot, I removed the lid and smelled it. I wept like a child.

Now it’s the only scent I wear.

Today on…

Mobile, Alabama. Morningtime. I was meeting someone important.

I pulled into the parking lot of Toomey’s Beads & Bulk Mardi Gras Supply on Macrae Avenue. Which is the kind of store you will not find in any city but Mobile.

Toomey’s is a 70,000 square-foot warehouse that represents one of the largest Mardi Gras supply inventories in the nation. Which is only fitting because Mobile is the official birthplace of American Mardi Gras.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Mobile, Alabama’s Mardi Gras bash is the oldest official Carnival celebration in the United States, started in 1703, shortly after the birth of Dick Clark.

But I wasn’t at Toomey’s to buy supplies for Fat Tuesday. I was here to meet Oscar.

At 11:30 a.m. Oscar arrived. The SUV pulled in. Oscar was accompanied by his handler, Andi.

Andi stepped out of her vehicle and opened the back door. Oscar was on a leash. His tail wagged. His entire backside was gyrating.

The easygoing bluetick hound came stepping out of the backseat. All legs.

He was your quintessential bluetick. White,

with salt-and-pepper ticking. Velvet black ears long enough to qualify as safety hazards. A nose the size of a regulation tennis ball.

A collar around his neck was labeled, BLIND DOG.

“Oscar can’t see,” said his handler. “He has no eyes.”

Oscar’s face is beautiful. Classic hound. Except there are no twinkling brown eyes looking at you. They were surgically removed because of congenital glaucoma.

This is why he walks with a unique gait. He lifts his front paws carefully. Gingerly. Every move he makes is with extreme care. He uses his nose to guide himself.

I could see him taking in his surroundings, using only his sense of smell. Muzzle aimed upward in the air. Testing each scent in the wind.

“His nose is how he sees,” said Jenn Greene, his mother and rescuer. “He can see everything with his…

Yeah, I remember September 11. I remember where I was when it happened.

I was getting ready for work. At the time, I was a high-school dropout who worked construction. I was watching “Good Morning America” on television, eating breakfast.

Charlie Gibson was on TV talking about something nobody cared about. Morning-show ridiculousness. Something like stir fry cooking. Or feng shui. Or El Niño. Or whatever America was talking about back then.

And the TV cut to an image of the burning skyscraper.

“One of the World Trade Center towers appears to be on fire,” the newscaster said.

I was about to leave the house and turn off the TV. But then I saw something. From the corner of the screen, hurtling through the sky, came a commercial aircraft. The plane hit the building. A gaping hole was torn into the South Tower.

The newscasters went silent.

Live television. I watched the passengers die on live television.

Finally someone broke the television broadcast silence. I don’t even remember what they said, but I remember what

I felt. I felt scared. I felt as though our whole way of life had been threatened.

Later, I went to work on the construction job site. But nobody was working. Everyone was watching a portable television set. Black and white screen. With an antenna. We were sitting on the porch of an unfinished house. Wearing unsoiled jeans and boots.

And we were listening in rapt silence to interviews from firemen, policemen, and anyone who had watched the towers crumble.

One of my coworkers was an older man named Robert. Robert was tough. He had navy tattoos, and cropped silver hair. His hands were the size of supermarket chickens.

And he was crying.

I remember showing up to the job site the following morning and being surprised at what I saw. Draped over the banister of an unfinished home was an American flag.

The banner…

Birmingham. It’s 4:23 a.m. It’s chilly. There is a quilt of fog suspended over the foothills of the Appalachians. The whole world is dark.

I should not be up at this hour. I am hardly awake. My hair is a mess. My eyes are crusted. But here I am. Standing in a park alongside a handful of average, middle-aged people all wearing impossibly short jogging shorts.

We’re a small group. We are strangers. None of us have met before. We don’t even know each other’s names.

We come in different shapes, colors, creeds, and sizes. Some are runners. Most of us are just ordinary people who haven’t donned athletic shorts since the Jimmy Carter administration.

We are here to finish Eliza’s run.

Eliza Fletcher. She was 34 years old when she was abducted and killed in Memphis. It happened after she woke early last Friday to complete her jogging route. She went out early. Around 4:30 a.m. She never finished. Her body was found, like refuse.

She was a kindergarten teacher. A wife. A mother. She was

beautiful. Just out for a jog.

This morning, all over the United States runners are getting together to finish Eliza’s run.

In Memphis, 2,100 signed up to run Eliza’s daily route and finish what Eliza started. In Raleigh, North Carolina, people have gathered. In Cleveland, Ohio, hundreds from around the city are running privately. In Colorado Springs, nearby mountain trails are choked with runners for Eliza. Oklahoma City. Sacramento. Detroit. San Antonio. Wichita. Laramie. Orlando.

We start jogging. Within seconds I am acutely aware of just how hopelessly out of shape I am.

One of us is a 48-year-old woman. She is tall, well over six feet. A lawyer. Her friend challenged her to run a half marathon on her fortieth birthday. That’s how she started jogging.

“I’m here this morning,” she says, “because Eliza could have been me.”

I meet another woman.…

Dear Memphis, I am praying. So help me. I really am.

I’m praying for your families. For your ER doctors and nurses. For your wounded. For all who are sad.

I’m nobody, Memphis. I’m just a guy. A guy who likes your music. A guy who loves your barbecue.

I am located 200 miles southeast of you, but my heart is in Bluff City right now.

When I close my eyes to pray, my mind wanders along Union Avenue. Past Sun Studios, birthplace of rock and roll. Where Johnny Cash, B.B. King, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis discovered themselves.

In my heart, Memphis, I am meandering Beale Street, past the clapboard shotgun house where W.C. Handy’s mother reared the Inventor of the Blues.

My spirit is strolling just south of Beale, past the old Lorraine Motel, where Doctor King was gunned down in 1968.

In my heart, I am eating a pulled pork sandwich, Memphis. I am covered in red sauce, my shirt has already gone to be with Jesus.

I am at the Memphis Zoo. Riding a Memphis trolley. At the

Peabody Hotel. The Botanical Gardens. Graceland.

And I’m praying for you.

Although, frankly, I’m not sure God will answer my prayers because I’m nothing. Truth told, I’m not even a very spiritual person. I don’t pray as often as I should. And if I’m being honest, I mostly pray during national championships.

But I heard about the gunman who drove through your town last night. He was shooting randomized victims. I read about how he walked into an AutoZone and pulled the trigger. Coldhearted. No remorse.

I read about the four he killed. About the terror he inspired.

My friend in Memphis called me last night, during the hourslong rampage. He said the whole town was taking cover.

“It’s weird,” he told me. “It’s like something from a horror movie.”

Memphis buses stopped running. Local television stations interrupted…

The first thing you should know about Joseph is that he isn’t an optimist. In fact, he has no faith in this world. And he has even less faith in people.

Losing your wife will do that to you. She died and left him with three kids. A small girl. A boy. And a twelve-year-old girl.

So Joseph works hard for a meager living. Very hard. He barely makes enough. He comes home late each night, wearing muddy clothes. Sometimes he puts in overtime and sleeps in his truck.

Joseph’s eldest daughter is half mother and half child. At night, she tucks her siblings into bed. She cooks. She helps with laundry. Life is not easy. And on many days, life just plain sucks.

At night, Joseph is in bed, thinking of how bad life is. Not only does he miss his wife, he misses the man he was when she was alive. She was taken too early.

How could anyone think this world is a happy place when good women die so young? How could any widower feel

warm and fuzzy about this world?

And the hits keep coming

One day he’s at his job. He’s exhausted from two night shifts in a row. He makes a catastrophic mistake while operating the bulldozer. It costs the company big money. They fire him.

Later in the afternoon, he's sitting on his steps, face in hands, crying. His oldest daughter finds him, she sits beside him. She drapes her arm around his shoulders.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” she asks.

He doesn’t want to tell her. He doesn’t want her growing up hating life as much as he does. She’s been through enough. She’s already more woman than girl.

“Nothing,” Joseph says. “I’ll be alright.”

The next day, he wanders through town, looking for work. He visits local businesses—hat in hand. He's practically begging for a job. He’s only a few steps away…

This is not my story. It was told to me. In fact, I’m hearing it for the first time, just like you are.

The year was 1982. The old man climbed out of a rust-red Ford. He was ancient. He walked with a shuffle as he hobbled into the supermarket. Struggling to walk. Fighting to breathe.

A young man in the parking lot saw him get out of the rust-red Ford. He rushed ahead to help. The kid was wearing a black sports coat. Black tie. Hair slicked back. Lots of cheap cologne.

“Thank you,” the old man said. “Would you be kind enough to get me a buggy?”

The kid pulled a cart from the stockyard of buggies. The old man hooked his cane over the handle and tried to catch his breath.

“What are you so dressed up for?” the old man asked.

“I’m going to a funeral.”

“I’m sorry,” said the man. “Family or friend?”

“Neither. It was my dad.”

The old man nodded, but said nothing. He pushed his buggy into the store. Past the pneumatic doors. The store was

filled with the paralyzingly lush sound of muzak. Death by violins.

The kid was following him closely because he was a good kid, and the old man was wheezing badly. He looked like he was about to fall over. Pale and gaunt. Shaky and frail.

“I’ll help you shop,” said the kid. “I’ve got some time before the funeral starts.”

“Thank you,” said the old man, whose face lit up like Christmas.

They puttered through the A&P together. Two strangers. When they reached the Campbell’s soup aisle the old man asked a question.

“You weren’t close with your father?”

“No. He left my mom when I was little. He didn’t want anything to do with me. I didn’t even like him.”

The old man nodded.

“Did you stay in touch?” he asked.

“Not really. I called…