Gabrielle Songe

Blog writer Gabrielle Songe, The Brahma and me, began her journalism career as a stringer employed by The Tri-State Defender, a Memphis weekly newspaper founded in 1951, by John Sengstacke, who served as publisher until his death in 1997.

Songe reported on candidates running for local offices during the 1994 election year. In less than 90 days she was hired as a general assignment reporter. The following year her series on Memphis optional schools won an Award of Achievement in the 1995 Mid-South Professional Journalism Awards, a chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists,.

Three articles, “2005 Plan represents ‘new hope,’” “Grapes of wrath” and “Cause” won awards in the 1996 Mid-South Professional Journalism Awards. Songe subsequently served as president of the Mid-South chapter of The Society of Professional Journalists. Songe moved her employment in 1996 to The Daily News Publishing Co., Memphis, covering law and government issues and writing a weekly feature in the Focus section for the daily newspaper.

As the law and government reporter her article, “Tie-breaking seat produces protracted selection process,” Nov. 20, 1996, described the choice of Shelby County Commissioner Morris Fair as the replacement for outgoing Commissioner Bill Gibbons, and “Seeking shoes,” Jan. 31, 1997, featured unintended consequences of Tennessee’s welfare reform program, Families First, that required children to attend school on a daily basis. However, some impoverished families did not have enough shoes to go around. So siblings shared pairs of shoes and could only attend classes on alternating days.

In her personal life as Songe’s care of abandoned canines increased she moved from the city to additional land in a neighboring county where she went to work for the Fayette County Review, a now defunct weekly newspaper.

Hired as a feature editor by The Southern Sentinel, Ripley, Miss., in 1997, Songe wrote a weekly column, under the title Perceptions, until 1999. Her publisher sent her to photograph dairy farms during Dairy Month of 1998, where she captured on 35 mm film a Brahma-Holstein calf being born. Learning that he was to be sold in 30 days, she purchased him for $40, and brought him home. The young bull, named Sonny, was the subject of several columns, and later became the featured protagonist in her blog.

While working as a contract writer and photographer for The Amory Advertiser, Songe’s photo of a hobo and his traveling German Shepherd took second place in the Mississippi Press Association 2000 Better Newspaper Contest Editorial Division A, presented June 16, 2001.

After back-to-back losses of employment and the foreclosure of her farm, Sept. 29, 2010, Songe began to blog at The Brahma and me, weaving through her writing and photography the escapades of her farm animals. In the process she reveals her spiritual journey that leads to her faith as a Christian. Recent entries begin with a devotional passage.

A published author Songe’s short story about Sonny appears in CC Writers Shorts II Our Pets – Our Family, an anthology of Christian writers’ works by Amazing Phrase Publishing of Collierville, Tenn.