Joey Ledford, Author at LikeTheDew.com

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Joey Ledford

Joey Ledford is a veteran journalist, who for more than 20 years was a writer and editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He also served as a writer and editor for United Press International for eight years.
Number of posts: 2
Email address: email
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Posts by Joey Ledford:

When home isn’t home anymore

by Joey Ledford | 8, Add your Comment | Jul 16, 2010

The great philosopher Mick Jagger sang it best: “What a drag it is getting old.”

One of the worst parts of the affliction the Stones’ song recalls is that not only are you putting on years, but the people you begat are getting that way as well. Or at least they are getting old enough that they don’t need the nest anymore.

Read on →

The amazing lightning bugs of Elkmont, Tenn.

by Joey Ledford | 5, Add your Comment | Jun 8, 2009

ELKMONT, Tenn. — One spectator likened it to Aunt Melba’s Christmas lights. Another described the trek through the darkness to see the show as a Halloween for adults without candy and the annoying trips up steps to knock on doors. “Woo,” said a third. “This is SOOO cool.” This magnificent display of nature is known as Elkmont’s synchronized lightning bugs. Photinus carolinus, one of 14 species of fireflies that inhabit the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, pick a two-week window each June to do their thing. Accounts differ when people are asked to describe this eerie explosion of fluorescence. From watching individual fireflies among thousands, it appeared to me that they light six consecutive times within about six seconds. Then darkness prevails for a like period before the cycle begins anew. Some felt the glow swept through the woods in a right to left wave. The phenomena appears to be […]

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Union loss in Chattanooga doesn't deter Mississippi workers

Chip Wells, 43, an 11-year veteran at the 5,200-worker Nissan plant in Canton, Mississippi, says the recent bad news coming out of the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, did nothing to deter him and fellow pro-union Nissan workers from their campaign to join the United Auto Workers. “People think that derailed us,” says Wells, who works in Nissan’s paint department, “but we think it made us stronger. That plant (in Chattanooga) was only opened for two years. They’re still in the honeymoon phase.” The UAW “made some mistakes and they realize it,” he says. “The demographics were different. Here labor rights are civil rights, act Read on →

Cold in Other Places

The feeling of your tires losing traction on an icy road is hard to label. You'd think it might feel like falling, a sudden stop or start, a gut-twisting vertigo as the ground drops away, but it's not that dramatic. Instead of physics slapping you with your own momentum, you feel, perhaps, like the road has just started lying to you. The motions of your hands and feet, something you've felt so very confident in for years, aren't following through on their promise. You're clearly steering in one direction, applying just so much pressure to the pedals, but the road Read on →

Thinking About the South

Oh, I love it and I hate it, Every now and then berate it, The sweet and sunny south where I was born. — Gina Forsyth Image in my head: a tour bus arriving in the republic of Biblestan, disgorging a file of daytrippers, like poverty tourists in a Rio slum, at some ramshackle barbecue joint, hiply-shod, fanny-pack-wearing gawkers shocked at the absence of recycling bins by the dumpsters, saying “Gee whilikers!” and “You betcha!”, having their barbecue not too spicy! then waddling off to the Gift Shop for some outrageous corncob art. I have Chuck Thompson’s book Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Read on →

A matter of style

A fellow writer asked me yesterday: What do you read? Which writers do you value? Who influences your style? This knocked me for six. It’s a Big Question. I have a long history in libraries and five bookcases stacked with a lifetime’s paperbacks (cheapskate) and short of trawling the shelves for authors’ names which often escape me, I didn’t think I had time to respond. IRS accounts waiting on my dining table reproach me every time I walk past doing something more interesting. But this intriguing question slipped into my mind’s cogs as they surreptitiously rotated. First off, I admit the guilty pl Read on →

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