2008 a year of losses and triumphs in area churches
Birmingham News / al.com
The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth moved back to his hometown of Birmingham this year, and the city gave the civil rights leader perhaps his biggest recognition ever: The Birmingham International Airport was named after him.

Black-eyed peas a Southern favorite on New Year's Day
Birmingham News / al.com
As any self-respecting Southerner knows, celebrating New Year's Day with some black-eyed peas has nothing to do with Fergie.

Birmingham photographer Melissa Springer still loves doing what she's always done
Birmingham News / al.com
Melissa Springer set out to reinvent herself. But what the Birmingham photographer came up with looks a lot like the woman she used to be.

Garden Talk - Alabama Cooperative Extension System landscape expert offers garden resolutions for 2009
Birmingham News / al.com
Q.Our garden club met recently and someone suggested we include landscape and gardening ideas in our New Year's resolutions. We wondered if you might give us some things that you see or hear that we need to accomplish.

Project Resolution ends its final year with hits, misses
Birmingham News / al.com
The second (and final) year of Project Resolution is at an end. And, with few exceptions, this year's group - five pairs of readers we followed in their quests to lose weight and get in shape - weighed in at The News each month, knowing full well they'd see those numbers again in print.