About Me

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e. l . wood is a native of birmingham, alabama. he grew up on the urban streets of dallas, texas before attending college at houston baptist university where he earned a b. a. in english and psychology. after a year of teaching high school english in the public schools of houston, e. l. wood attended sam houston state university where he earned a master’s degree in english. after bouncing around the deep south for several years, he finished his ph. d. in american literature before 1900 at the university of southern mississippi. e. l. wood has been teaching in some capacity since 1992 and has taught for a local community college since 1995. in his spare time, e.l. wood enjoys reading, movies, and the outdoors. he is personally acquainted with several search and rescue teams around the southeast. he is married to the lovely and gracious a. c. they have a daughter (special k), and one dog. They reside in h'burg, deep south. in addition to being the sole proprietor of the gandy dancer billiard parlor, e. l. wood dabbles in folk art and the occasional cultivation of a handlebar mustache.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

liberty or death?






with each passing year, it seems that government is more and more interested in limiting individual freedoms and, for the most part, it seems the populous is content to just sit and take it. businesses in my town, for example, can no longer offer smoking sections because the city government has decided that it needs to regulate what goes into our bodies. where will this particular slippery slope end? now that public restaurants and bars are off limits for smokers, our homes will be targeted soon. already the food police are working hard to legislate what foods can and cannot be served/consumed at restaurants. when that battle is won, the health-nazis will again take the battle into our homes. the squeeze upon our freedom of choice in what automobiles we drive is in full swing, and, if we don't pay attention, the nanny state will be regulating our thermostats within the next decade. all of this is to say that i really enjoyed ruminating this past fourth of july on the freedoms we enjoy as well as those which have gone the way of the dinosaur and others that are on the endangered species list. with this in mind, i chose not to fly the stars and stripes this independence day; instead, i proudly hung the flag designed by the minutemen of culpeper, virginia. this flag evolved from ben franklin's political cartoon of a rattle snake chopped into thirteen sections representing the fractured nature of the original thirteen colonies before the revolutionary war. the caption in franklin's cartoon read, "join or die." in these times of political struggle and bipartisan idiocy, it seems that we could take a lesson from this cartoon and this flag. no matter what stripe you are politically, we must not ever forget that at the core of our nation is the belief that we are free and independent and self reliant beings who live best when government leaves us alone.