The Hearth & Holler Gazette — Issue No. 5

February 21, 2026 / jrmilson / 2 Comments

A Weekly Visit of Tales, Tidings, and Old-Time Country Comfort

Welcome!

It’s been a week of preparation in Honey Hill Country.

As always, The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a work of fiction set in a place that exists most clearly in the imagination — though from time to time it may resemble somewhere you have known. But for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are, and what I am talking about

The Hearth & Holler Gazette hails from Honey Hill Country, a small, rural corner of the Missouri Ozarks, as it might have been known in the year 1904 — a time of front porches and wagon roads, oil lamps and handwritten letters, when news traveled at a human pace, and a Saturday paper was meant to be read slowly, with coffee close at hand. This is not a paper of breaking news or loud headlines. It prefers instead to notice it — the small, human-sized moments that once filled a morning without asking much in return.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette is a work of fiction — a made-up paper from a made-up place, written in the spirit of an earlier time. Any resemblance to real towns, people, or events is entirely coincidental, though we do our best to make it feel otherwise.

This must be understood at the beginning — the towns, fields, and citizens described here exist only within these pages. With that firmly agreed, the small and ordinary wonders of the week may unfold as they will. That is the way of things here. That is all we need to know, and that ought to be enough.

Winter loosens its hold by degrees. In St. Louis, great halls rise in anticipation of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Here at home, neighbors measure beams, set buckets beneath persistent drips, and begin planning how best to raise a roof before spring rains press their case.

Maple sap runs quietly. Rabbits consult schedules and polish sashes. Markets shift. Coin jars gather weight.

The county is not yet in motion — but it is readying itself.

So, with that said — Please come on in. Your paper awaits . . . . . .

And would you prefer Coffee or Tea with your newspaper?

Continue reading →

After the Steamboat Turned the Bend — When Stories Take Their Time

February 19, 2026February 11, 2026 / jrmilson / 3 Comments

A reflection on Mark Twain, the long reach of story, and where Little Red Bear first found his voice.

On February 18, 1885, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published.

More than a century later, the river is still moving.

I first read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn years ago — long before I understood what they were doing to me as a writer. Later came Life on the Mississippi, and more besides. At the time, I simply loved the stories. The raft. The sparks in the dark. The sound of the river settling back into itself.

Years later, walking through EPCOT at Walt Disney World, I wandered into a special exhibit of personal items belonging to Mark Twain. Behind glass sat a simple fountain pen he had once held in his own hand.

Not a monument.
Not a statue.

A pen.

I remember standing there, thinking about the ordinary act of writing — the scratch of nib against paper, the slow forming of sentences, the patience of revision. That pen had once rested between his fingers while he shaped rivers, boys, steamboats, sparks.

And I felt, in a very quiet way, connected.

There is a passage from Huckleberry Finn that has stayed with me all these years . . . .

“Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn’t hear nothing for you couldn’t tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.”

It is not dramatic. It is not moralizing. It is simply noticing.

The sparks.
The bend in the river.
The long delay before the waves arrive.

There is something in that river passage that has followed me all these years — the way the sparks fall, the way the steamboat disappears around the bend, the way the waves arrive long after she is gone. Those gentle waves are still reaching me. Without my fully realizing it at the time, they found their way into Little Red Bear. He would not make a speech about it. He would simply watch the sparks, listen to the frogs, and notice how the raft rocks a little after the noise has faded. Red has always trusted the quiet aftermath more than the loud arrival. In many ways, I suspect that is where he was born — somewhere between Twain’s river and the stillness that follows.

Stories turn the bend.

The sparks fade.
The whistle grows faint.
The river grows still.

And years later, the waves arrive.

Some of them began their journey in February of 1885, though it would take many years before they reached a desk of my own. Some reached me standing in EPCOT, looking at a fountain pen once held in Mark Twain’s hand. And some are still arriving, rocking the raft just enough to remind me why I began writing in the first place.

If Little Red Bear ever feels steady beneath you, if his voice ever sounds like it trusts the quiet more than the noise, you now know where that began.

Somewhere on a river.
Somewhere after the steamboat turned the bend.

‘Till next time, then — Jim (and Red!)

P.S. from Little Red Bear

Sometimes the river seems still, but the current is moving steady and sure beneath the surface. Stories are like that. They keep shaping us quietly — and then one day, we notice the raft has carried us farther than we realized.

“The Adventures of Little Red Bear: The First Holler!”

These illustrations were created with the assistance of AI.

The Hearth & Holler Gazette — Issue No. 4

February 14, 2026February 13, 2026 / jrmilson / 2 Comments

A Weekly Visit of Tales, Tidings, and Old-Time Country Comfort

Welcome!

It has been a mud bound week in Honey Hill Country. Another marked by delays, detours, growing shortages of everyday staples, and the steady work of getting on with things anyway.

Regular readers may recall that last week we introduced period-style illustrations, offering a visual record of events alongside the printed words of selected stories. This week, we take another big step forward — introducing our new staff editorial cartoonist, Clarence “Clary” Moss. Clary will be introducing his first editorial cartoon in the pages of the Gazette today, and will be a featured weekly contributor going forward.

But before we go any further, for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are, and what I am talking about

So, with that said — Please come on in. Your newspaper awaits . . . . . .

And would you prefer Coffee or Tea with your newspaper?

Continue reading →

Libraries — The Quiet Beginning of Big Adventures

February 10, 2026February 10, 2026 / jrmilson / 3 Comments

On Libraries, Curiosity, and a First Card That Changed Everything

Some memories stay with you not because they were dramatic, but because they quietly opened a door.

My first trip to a library did exactly that.

It was a chilly, rainy October evening, and I was eight years old. We had just moved to a growing suburb outside St. Louis, and I was newly settled into third grade at a brand-new school. Earlier that afternoon, our teacher announced an assignment — a report on dinosaurs.

DINOSAURS!

That was all it took.

After dinner that evening, my father put on his overcoat, settled his fedora on his head, and took me to the local library. I had never been inside one before. I remember the way the doors opened into a space that felt larger than it needed to be — aisle after aisle of tall shelves, all of them filled with books that reached far above my head.

It felt like I had crossed over a threshold into a new world and was standing inside a promise.

A few minutes later I was issued my very first library card. It had my name on it. And with it, for an eight-year-old, came feelings of recognition, trust, and responsibility. I was now a certified, card-carrying member of society. We checked out several books on dinosaurs, and I carried them home like treasure. That night, reading and racing from one dinosaur illustration to the next, something quietly and permanently took root.

Continue reading →

The Hearth & Holler Gazette — Issue No. 3

February 7, 2026February 5, 2026 / jrmilson / 2 Comments

A Weekly Visit of Tales, Tidings, and Old-Time Country Comfort

Welcome!

It has been a snowbound week in Honey Hill Country — one marked by delays, detours, and the steady work of getting on with things as best they could be managed.

But this week also marks a small but meaningful change for the The Hearth & Holler Gazette — one that has me genuinely excited about where the paper is heading. From time to time, select stories will now be accompanied by period-style illustrations, offering a visual record of events alongside the printed word. These images are meant to be read as much as seen — another way of noticing what has happened around us and remembering it clearly.

These illustrations are being prepared carefully, with focused attention to the Ozarks setting of Little Red Bear’s stories and the 1904 period the Gazette inhabits. They are intentionally restrained, observational, and rooted in the visual language of the time — not modern embellishments, but echoes of how stories were once quietly shown as well as told before the use of photography became commonplace.

But before we go any further, for first time visitors, it may help to know where — and when — we are, and what I am talking about

The Gazette hails from Honey Hill Country, a small, rural corner of the Missouri Ozarks, as it might have been known in the year 1904 — a time of front porches and wagon roads, oil lamps and handwritten letters, when news traveled at a human pace, and a Saturday paper was meant to be read slowly, with coffee close at hand. This is not a paper of breaking news or loud headlines. It prefers instead to notice it — the small, human-sized moments that once filled a morning without asking much in return.

What follows reflects the shape of these past days: trains slowed and roads altered, plans postponed and routines adjusted. It also holds the smaller things that traveled just as surely through the cold — a door opened, a shovel shared, a joke passed along to lighten the work. Taken together, they tell the story of a week that tested patience, rewarded cooperation, and reminded us that even when progress is measured in careful steps, it is still progress all the same.