Author Archives: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

About Deborah Fagan Carpenter

The creative and professional life of Deborah Fagan Carpenter has taken many directions: visual merchandiser, decorator, potter, sculptor, modern expressionist painter, photographer, and freelance feature writer. As Contributing Editor at PorchScene, her contributions are fueled by her love of all things beautiful, interesting, edible, and Southern.

A Southernism, Monday, April 15, 2024

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

  Truth: that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.   —William Faulkner … Continue reading →

Posted in Exploring the South | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, April 15, 2024

A Southernism, Monday, April 1, 2024

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

  “April that year came sudden and still, and the green of the trees was a wild bright green. The pale wisterias bloomed all over town, and silently the blossoms shattered.”     — Carson McCullers, The Member of the … Continue reading →

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged , | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, April 1, 2024

A Southernism, Monday, March 18, 2024

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

  I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.     —Rebecca Wells Photo: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, March 18, 2024

A Southernism, Monday, March 11, 2024

Posted on March 11, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“Despite the forecast, live like it’s spring.”   —Lilly Pulitzer Photo: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, March 11, 2024

A Southernism, Monday, March 4, 2024

Posted on March 4, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.” ― Jimmy Carter, The Nobel Peace … Continue reading →

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged , | 2 Comments

A Southernism, Monday, February 26, 2023

Posted on February 26, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“These southerners know the names of what shrubs hang over what creek, what dogwood flowers bloom what color, what kind of soil is under their feet.” —Natalia Goldberg Photo: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

Posted in Exploring the South | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, February 26, 2023

A Southernism, Monday, February 19, 2024

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”   — Dr. Martin Lither King, Jr. Photo: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged , | Comments Off on A Southernism, Monday, February 19, 2024

A Southernism, Monday, February 12, 2024

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“No one is without Christianity if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, … Continue reading →

Posted in Exploring the South | 3 Comments

A Southernism, Monday, January 22, 2024

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

  A southerner doesn’t truly understand cold. Though Anne was born in Alabama and schooled in Mississippi, she had traveled North, and, like many Southerners, gained a theoretical understanding of the concept of cold. But the mind is an overprotective … Continue reading →

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Southernism, Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Deborah Fagan Carpenter

“…and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.” —James Lee Burke Photo: Deborah Fagan Carpenter

Posted in Southernisms | Tagged | 1 Comment