Everything and Nothing: A cure for the Sunday Afternoon Blues Aïda Rogers Posted 3/21/23By Aïda RogersFor many years I’ve been afflicted by the Sunday Afternoon Blues, which means that for almost as many years I’ve known how to get rid of them: I get out of the house and do something....
The thing he carries
Everything and Nothing: The thing he carries Aïda Rogers Posted December 13, 2022By Aïda RogersThe thing my father carries isn’t as old as he is, but it looks it. His briefcase can only be described with hyphens: banged-up, beat-up, worn-out. But those are my words. I don’t think he would use...
The hush before Christmas
Everything and Nothing: The hush before Christmas Aïda Rogers Posted December 13, 2022By Aïda RogersThere’s a moment close to Christmas Day when everything slows down. The crazy stuff stops and a hush descends, like the moment before the orchestra conductor puts down the baton and the applause erupts. You could call...
Love Story
Everything and Nothing: Love Story Aïda Rogers Posted November 9, 2022By Aïda RogersThere are all kinds of love in this world, and the one I’m in love with right now is right across the street. It involves my neighbor, Sharon, and Fancy, her cat.If you laugh I excommunicate you.As happens with...
A place of sanctuary
Everything and Nothing: A place of sanctuary Aïda Rogers Posted October 26, 2022By Aïda RogersThere are many words to describe the times we’re living in, and most connote noise. What a relief, then, to find a place where the noise is turned down, where vitriol won’t work, where collaboration, not competition,...
Summer Ballet
Everything and Nothing: Summer Ballet Aïda Rogers Posted August 16, 2022By Aïda RogersThe focus is immense. Across from me, a woman with brown hair is fixed to her phone. To my left, a woman with blonde hair has grown into her iPad. Before me on a small chair, an Asian man...
Voices from ‘a safe area not far’
Everything and Nothing: Voices from ‘a safe area not far’ Aïda Rogers Posted August 8, 2022By Aïda RogersTheir words come across my computer screen, words of explanation and description, dashed plans and new realizations. I receive them with no trouble in my cluttered South Carolina office. They’re from two young women...
A checklist for people who don’t like summer
Everything and Nothing: A checklist for people who don’t like summer Aïda Rogers Posted August 1, 2022By Aïda RogersFor someone who dislikes summer as much as I do, I can’t help but marvel at the many good things it provides. Proof of a divine generosity? I think so. Because it seems...
Looking for Sharon
Everything and Nothing: Looking for Sharon Aïda Rogers Posted July 12, 2022By Aïda RogersIn the middle of the night in the late 1960s, my baby brother developed a 104-degree fever. I remember this night – my panicked mother lifting and lowering him into the bathtub, we three sisters keeping a scared...
Statement Earrings
Everything and Nothing: Statement Earrings Aïda Rogers Posted June 24, 2022By Aïda Rogers“Bold lip. You need a bold lip.” I poke my lower lip out at Ryan, my supervisor at work, who is now supervising me on what to wear to the various events surrounding a family wedding. Ryan is good at...
Icie’s Secret
Everything and Nothing: Icie's Secret Aïda Rogers Posted May 27, 2022By Aïda RogersIn her wonderful new book, Liz Newall does something many of us say we’re going to do but don’t: She researches her family history to solve a mystery that's pestered her since childhood. It’s a secret wrapped in scandal,...
The curriculum we all deserve
Everything and Nothing: The curriculum we all deserve Aïda Rogers Posted April 25, 2022By Aïda RogersIn a parking lot in South Carolina, a family from Texas sat in their maroon minivan taking stock of what they’d just experienced. They’d waited in a restaurant 45 minutes before a worker told them they...
Winsome Beauties
Everything and Nothing: Winsome Beauties Aïda Rogers Posted April 7, 2022By Aïda Rogers“Isn’t it funny the things you remember,” my mom said to me recently. She’d been recounting some random anecdote from her childhood.Mom spends a lot of time in her brown chair, much of her churning energy slowed by health...
Of camellias, poets, and getting tripped up by the truth
Everything and Nothing: Of camellias, poets, and getting tripped up by the truth Aïda Rogers Posted March 1, 2022By Aïda RogersThis is the time of year when people in McClellanville do camellia walks. This they do at Hampton Plantation State Historic Site, where South Carolina’s first poet laureate, Archibald Rutledge, lived in his...
The best dessert
Everything and Nothing: The best dessert Aïda Rogers Posted Feb. 10, 2022By Aïda RogersFor me and many others, Sundays were always the same. There was always church, followed by a big meal, followed by a long nap. These rituals marked the end of a week and the beginning of the next....
The pursuit of Joy
Everything and Nothing: The pursuit of Joy Aïda Rogers Posted Feb. 2, 2022By Aïda RogersI was in my broke twenties when I first encountered Joy. We didn’t run in the same circles; a high-dollar item, Joy was out of my newspaper writer reach. Literally. That $500 bottle of French perfume, in...
The Real Wife
Everything and Nothing: The Real Wife Aïda Rogers Posted Jan. 19, 2022By Aïda RogersI imagine everybody gets a surprise or two after they get married, so imagine mine when I realized the person I married was already married - to his wood stove. It took a few years for me to...
Oh, what a book can do
Everything and Nothing: Oh, what a book can do Aïda Rogers Posted Dec. 21, 2021By Aïda RogersI’ve just sobbed my way through Where the Red Fern Grows, a famous children’s book about a boy in the Ozark Mountains who devotes himself to buying, training, and hunting with his two red coonhounds....