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.

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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Anna Karenina

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Doug Cumming

The characters in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina are not allegories or didactic figures that project the dogmas of Tolstoy’s Christian thought (as he does in The Kingdom of God is Within You). They are fully formed human beings, living in their … Continue reading →

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The Aerobatic Swift

Posted on June 22, 2022 by Doug Cumming

Out on the red-tiled terrace off the top floor of our Collegio Internazionale, there are many miracles. In one direction, the pride of Urbino – a bell tower that can surprise with alleluias through the old brick alleyways, and behind … Continue reading →

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Lovesong of J. Alfred Somebody

Posted on June 6, 2022 by Doug Cumming

I am Lazarus come from the dead to tell you all. No, that’s not what I meant at all. Still positive from Covid today, staying positive in my room. But I’m more like those perplexed in the marketplace on the … Continue reading →

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Room with a View

Posted on June 1, 2022 by Doug Cumming

I am in an unusual prison cell, isolated in Room 54 of the Collegio Internazionale, in Urbino, because I have Covid. The Italians require seven days of isolation from the time of my “extremely positive” test results yesterday afternoon. The … Continue reading →

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Italian values

Posted on May 28, 2022 by Doug Cumming

URBINO, Italy – These American undergraduates are getting their orientation from Mirko Marinelli, a director of GEV, the outfit that runs their dormitory. It’s a remarkable building — palatial, literally: a 15th century palace, the Palazzo Chiocci, which contemporary Italian … Continue reading →

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