Author Archives: Doug Cumming

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About Doug Cumming

Doug Cumming is an associate professor emeritus of journalism at Washington & Lee University with 26 years experience at metro newspapers and magazines. After getting a Ph.D. at UNC-Chapel Hill in mass communications, he taught multimedia reporting and feature writing at Loyola University-New Orleans and at W&L in Virginia. Earlier, he worked at the newspapers in Raleigh, Providence and Atlanta; was editor of the Sunday Magazine in Providence; and helped launch Southpoint monthly magazine in Atlanta. He won a George Polk Award and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

Robert E. Lee and Me

Posted on March 3, 2023 by Doug Cumming

Changing names honoring Confederate generals and removing memorials, apart from a few practical challenges, is relatively easy. Monuments can be moved into museums, and names on street signs can be changed. (At W&L, the four-ton statue of Lee napping in … Continue reading →

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The Poetics of James Taylor

Posted on February 7, 2023 by Doug Cumming

Moving in silent desperationKeeping an eye on the Holy LandA hypothetical destinationSay, who is this walking man? The baritone of James Taylor bewitches with a melody that long ago wormed into my brain for keeps. It sleeps, then can’t you … Continue reading →

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Energy is everything (almost)

Posted on January 9, 2023 by Doug Cumming

“Energy” has many meanings. But there’s one way to see it as everything. Energy is Man’s discovery of fire, how civilizations ate (from hunter gathering to farming), the population-exploding Industrial Revolution, and the cause of Gulf Wars. It’s fossil fuels … Continue reading →

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Political Pragmatism, 2022

Posted on December 10, 2022 by Doug Cumming

Common Good Governing began in 2017 with a dream. That is, literally, “a dream,” a bad dream that Lester Levine woke up with about a week after Trump won the Election of 2016. It was also just after Levine’s first … Continue reading →

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On a Passenger Train to New Orleans

Posted on November 23, 2022 by Doug Cumming

I am not a train nut. But riding in Amtrak’s private sleeper car for the daylong trip from Atlanta to New Orleans – the old Southern Crescent – has me in an unusual state of elation. The perfect tracks bend … Continue reading →

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A way to read Hershel’s utterances

Posted on November 18, 2022 by Doug Cumming

Regarding the two Black candidates in the looming Georgia runoff for the U.S. Senate, too much has been said and written already. But the insight I heard from a panelist at the Candler School of Theology two days after the … Continue reading →

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Atlanta’s Charlie Loudermilk

Posted on September 9, 2022 by Doug Cumming

You could say Buckhead has changed. The place where there used to be a humble diner and neon Coca Cola sign at the intersection of Peachtree and Roswell roads is now Charlie Loudermilk Park. Metro Music is gone, but the … Continue reading →

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Cherokee Footprints

Posted on August 27, 2022 by Doug Cumming

When I’m in these soft green hills, around a high lake impounded around 1930 in North Georgia, I wake to an awareness of the Cherokee. By their absence, in this silence with the occasional hoot of a barred owl, I … Continue reading →

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Cornershots

Posted on August 21, 2022 by Doug Cumming

The Roanoke Times occasionally runs short vignettes from readers under the heading “Cornershot.” I had a couple of these published that I’m saving here. Condensation is something you learn from doing a lot of longer writing. Tranquil Moments Along the … Continue reading →

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A Colossal Mistake

Posted on August 11, 2022 by Doug Cumming

The thing about America that struck Gutzon Borglum was bigness. His parents had emigrated from little Denmark to the Wild West. So when their son John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum was born in Bear Lake, Idaho, in 1867, the … Continue reading →

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