Michael Cogdill LLC

09/01/2026

We’re so happy for the communities of Pelzer, Williamston, and all their surroundings.

We heard from so many grateful people who’ve been cared for by my brilliant wife, Dr Danette Cogdill. This agreement we announce today is a victory for everyone.

Thank you all for the love and appreciation you have poured out onto her. To make someone well again, to safeguard the health of people ranging from young children to senior adults, is a high calling. We are so grateful to everyone who will continue to trust Dr. Cogdill — my precious wife — and her team at Pelzer Urgent Care. It’s a special place, one she worked so hard to build into an oasis of care where it is deeply needed. A place centered on love of everyone.

Cheers to you all, and to the future!

08/30/2026

The Goodness of an Ego Shattering.

Every time I do a book signing — from the first book to the one I have out now — three things always strike me, good and hard

1. Celebrity is a tinfoil crown. Every writer wants to be celebrated by at least one reader. No one sits and composes without wanting to be read and understood, and gushed with a touch of applause. That is the ego of a writer, without denial, and it telegraphs straight to the ego in us all. When someone walks through the door of a bookstore, sees a writer at that table and and averts eye contact, moves in another direction, avoids any touch point, the writer feels a brush with the same humbling afflicting the poor, the hurting, the struggling among us. It is sturdy humility — a nourishing force — being ignored. It never feels good, it just is good.

2. Religions can form fire walls against faith in God. At my book signing yesterday, a kind woman asked me if my book had any religion to it at all. I said no. Only then did she get interested. Only then was she willing to talk with me about the book’s ultimate point — love as the most powerful and comforting force in the universe. Love is, after all, a welcoming doorway. Religion too often planks it up and coats it in lead. And yes, I am a member of the Christian religion. I am, more accurately, a believer in God. My fellow Presbyterians understand.

3. A signature matters nothing without a relationship. I know of a famous writer who began signing his books as a rote, not a rite of shared humanity. Sitting in his fidgets, impatient, looking down, no eye contact — these are foolish pride missing the entire point of meeting someone at a table over a book. My thanks to everyone who has ever stepped over to my table to say hello. My thanks to every reader who spends precious life with something I dared to write down. I hope it entertained even just a little. I hope it held some meaning. I hope you felt welcomed.

A friend of mine found a copy of my first novel in a used bookstore for five dollars. We will relaunch She Rain one day. We took the book out of print for now, working in the motion picture business toward finding readers because publishing is such a mess. What makes this story funny is I had signed that book to a reader named Anne. Clearly that signature meant nothing to her. She just might’ve hated the book, too. I love to laugh about it with readers, even at book signings. It’s humbling. Life is humbling. Longing for fame and the approval of everyone is like trying to build a pine-box rocket in the backyard expecting to go to the moon. 

It’s good to stay on the ground, to write what feels lyrical and meaningful and fun, seeing what happens.

Knowing someone will always avert their eyes, walk away, leaving the writer lonesome at the signing table, humbled under the tinfoil crown.

08/28/2026

A brief word about Miss Dolly Parton, her father’s shame, and a calling to us all.

Dolly Parton‘s father, Robert Lee Parton, was illiterate, had to work fields and dirt to feed his large family hidden in the hollows of Smoky Mountain Tennessee.

She talked openly about his brilliance. He held a mind full of intuition for numbers and trading and business, all of it held back by the isolation of poor opportunity.

Shame occupied his fine mind.

Dolly was born into a house with no electricity or running water. She witnessed illiteracy germinate and grow that shame as if a wound that would not heal.

And she did something about such shame.

The woman who wrote us songs captivating ear and heart of the world gave herself to reading. She gave away books by the millions.

“My daddy's inability to read probably kept him from seeing all of his dreams come true. Inspiring kids to love to read became my mission,” said the gifted, generous girl from a pretty nowhere whose legacy is now everywhere.

My own daddy could read very well, loved his newspapers, but carried the shame of having to quit school to work. As a young boy of so many potentials, he grew into a man who wanted education for his son more than anything. He would’ve given his last dime for my tuition. He taught me that learning is sacred, there is a holiness to knowing. University learning became my calling, my work, an honor I carry to this day. Thanks to him.

Today we live in the country full of libraries and books turned digital onto telephones. We thankfully live in a New South from which Dolly’s charity keeps giving books by the millions to children, who otherwise would not have them.

May those books kick open doorways to learning, to education, to broad minds unaffected by the carping narrow who prefer ignorance and, frankly, shame.

I will do a book signing Saturday morning at Judson in downtown Greenville. Where Did Joe Go Is my latest, a coffee table book for children and the child within everyone, illustrated by a former superstar child prodigy who went on to Harvard. Some of those books are going to go to Dolly’s Imagination Library, free. When people ask me, what’s the book is about, I say, simply, love. It reminds us love is the strongest force in the universe.

To help a child love reading is to improve the man or woman who is to come. Pythagoras got it right. So did Dolly!

Our national conversation right now tells us we long for more such love. It helps do away with some old shame, still too much with us.

Godspeed, Miss Dolly Parton. You left us with lyrical love songs, distilled from your essence.

You left us with a high calling written in the stars.

08/27/2026

Thank you, everyone. This book is a labor of love, one of a great hope, with a very happy, ironic ending. It is for children and the child within us all.

https://www.facebook.com/share/1EuY3JqeJP/?mibextid=wwXIfr



When reflecting on “Where Did Joe Go?” Michael Cogdill feels that the story is less about death and more about the enduring nature of love.

08/26/2026

An ironic lesson in how to be successtul. Please forgive a few redundancies. Stay with me here.

The story of Dolly and Whitney holds a truth about a song, a legacy, and how to build one that matters.

It is love letter of business savvy and human excellence every man and woman can learn from.

Here.

Now.

Miss Dolly Parton was velvet and steel at once. Heart and mind in exquisite balance.

She was thoughtful, a listener, an innovator, a poor little girl from Appalachia who would grow to walk into any boardroom and own the place.

Lately I have dealt with a person in a role of high corporate leadership who let my partners and me down. This person let his own people down. Promised and did not deliver. Heard but did not listen, nor seize opportunity.

It cost his organization. It will end up costing people who earn far less than he.

But there is no malice. Only care. Compassion. Learning.

Miss Dolly Parton taught the world much about these, and how to succeed.

Some of you are not old enough to remember her beginnings on television with a glittery blond crooner, Porter Wagoner. She was a young, pretty girl from the hollows of Tennessee, so easy to underestimate. But with a fire growing in her, one that refined talent and presence, "IT" factor on stage, a burning desire to help those on the downside of advantage where she had been.

Miss Dolly and Porter Wagner had a falling out, ended up in the courts. So it can be in matters here on earth. They both learned things from that shadowy time. He could not control her. She would learn her full value.

She would reconcile with him, even help him financially when he fell upon the rocks of near ruin.

That iconic song, I will Always Love You she wrote for him, about him, not Eros love, but love like family, no matter, betrayal.

No matter his feet of clay off which he would stumble to watch her soar.

They would reconcile, beautifully. She was there with his family at the bed where Porter Wagnoner died.

And now, beyond her own death bed, look at what she left us.

An American canon of music only she could make, lessons in how to be a lady, a wife, a mogul. A uniter, a magnet to nearly every prism of personality in our riven land.

She taught us all how to shine and be decent at once.

She knew how to be poor, knew how to be rich, knew the definition of enough, making sure others had enough.

And here she still can teach us all how to be.

Godspeed Miss Dolly. Here on earth, we all still have so much to learn from you, yes, even in the C suites, too often draped in the artificial royalty.

You became our queen of country music, movie glitterati, American success right out of the hollows, human generosity that knew the way back home.

Your Highness, may we keep learning from you how to keep our feet humbly on this ground.

From down here, we can scarcely imagine how other gone greats of American music played you in.

08/25/2026

Every man raised by strong women — made into a man by such womanhood — ought grieve Miss Dolly Parton at depths seldom reached.

The loss of her highlights what makes a life abundant. Known for her kindness, gentleness, generosity, never taking the self you could see too seriously.

The talent that went with it all lived out her miracle as well. 

She wanted a small service, no shower of glitterati. Immediate family only. 

Tributes? dollyparton.com

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library at imaginationlibrary.com remains one of her finest legacies. We all can embrace all of our days.

It is easy to believe this fine woman of Appalachia, when she said her prayers, remembered others way more than herself. She knew how to be poor, she knew how to be rich, she knew how to be. 

America lost some of its royalty today. A queen beyond country music, who taught everyone how to be shiny and decent at the same time. 

We will always love you, Dolly.

Where you are now, find that place where the grass is blue. There with your crystalline soprano and some holy strings, having their say.

Oh and say hey to Porter, Flatt, Scruggs, Bill Monroe. We can hardly imagine how they played you in. 

08/20/2026

An announcement from Danette Cogdill

If you have ever agonized over a decision, felt torn between love of others and what life can demand of us, then you know where my beloved Dr. Danette Cogdill stands today.

Effective October 13th Dr. Cogdill will no longer serve as the provider at Pelzer urgent care. She loves her patients there. She has loved serving them and making them well for the last 2 1/2 years when she first opened the doors on April 15th 2024. She’s given of herself, sacrificially, and out of a deep devotion to protect their health and well-being, and to feel like extended family.

We have sought to purchase Pelzer Urgent Care this year and worked to keep it functioning with the care and loving touch she has provided. We could not come to terms with the current ownership. After several months of negotiations the ownership would not accept our reasonable offer.

As so many of you know, it is exhausting and unhealthy to stay where we are not valued, especially when that value contributes to the health and vitality of a community in need of primary care and urgent care medicine.

So, Dr. Cogdill must move on. But she will remain a practitioner of medicine. Everyone stay tuned, her next move will be an exciting one, and not too far away from Pelzer. She will always seek the betterment of the people she treats. She is grateful for the loyalty of those she has treated. She leaves them knowing they have been heard, valued in their humanity, and loved for life.

And as the apostle Paul reminds us, love never fails.

Our deepest gratitude to you all.

08/20/2026

To borrow from Mark Twain, no one‘s mind should amount to a mule, stubborn in thinking in**st and arson are the same thing.

In order to think, one must be thoughtful. We live in a time when some let identity politics do their thinking for them. This will always divide life by two, hard. There is no thoughtfulness in parroting the one-sided vitriol of someone who appears on television or Instagram. Twain again, there is nothing to be learned from the second kick of a mule. 

A university education is not an indoctrination. It is an invitation to learn to think for oneself, to know one’s limitations and fill those gaps with the wisdom and knowledge of others, often long gone.

History reminds us true intellect is strong enough to be immortal. 

Today’s enthronement of ignorance will become a believing the earth is flat of tomorrow.

08/18/2026

Four years ago this summer night, I first laid eyes on the love of my life.

My Danette Cogdill charged up to me like the athlete she is, beaming that smile that spoke poetic answer to every longing I had ever known as a man. And some I could not imagine.

We had agreed to meet at Noma Square, Greenville, SC, for a first date

It became our destiny, for each of us had given up.

We had surrendered to the power of the universe, not the myopia of our own seeking. I was done. Fed up.

We each had decided to let God get it done.

This picture from our honeymoon proves the power of divine surrender.

Seismic Eros can rise from the hard ground of daring to — give in.

When I saw her in those little hot pants and that divine luster of deeply good womanhood, I had to look away. When I looked back, I was married. Had to be a gentleman about it. Couldn’t go straight to one knee.

But the date did end with, “You might have met your match, Mr. Cogdill.”

I will spare you the flirtation that got us there.

I will tell you I kissed her good night, holding her sweet face in my hands then got in my car and went home, sending her to her bed with a “sweet dreams.”

Four years later, she is my dream come true, more by the second.

Thanks be to God. 

Happy anniversary of first sight, Dr. Cogdill.

Time for us to change our lives and to get back to running amok around the world.



08/18/2026

This is publication day for a book in whose rumble seat I sit. I am all the way in the back. And a great man is driving this.

Dr Bob Saul, a retired pediatrician, let his thought leadership flow and line every page. He invited me to write the vignettes, some brief stories of extraordinary people I have experienced across the arc of my career and life. This is about them. This is about the leadership of Bob Saul.

It is a movement in the making, especially in these times.  Hear his words on this day of its publication.

“Happy Pub Day! Truth, trust, science, civility, diversity, and faith are the six things discussed in WHAT REALLY MATTERS: FIND MEANING AMID UPHEAVAL. Michael Cogdill and I are excited to publish this book and hopefully start a movement. We invite you to get the book and make a difference.”

And we invite you to the Greenwood Arts Center on Thursday, beginning at 5:30. We will briefly discuss the book, take a few questions, then we will sign.

In every book signing I do, I love to stand on a foundation of gratitude with every future reader. Books forge relationships between writers and readers.

Thanks to Dr. Bob, this is one so very worth your time and money. It is to be shared, talked about, its ideas are there to be practiced and given away by all of us.

I am a better man for having written alongside this extraordinary man.

Bob will appear Sunday afternoon at the Barnes & Noble at shops at Green Ridge. I will be traveling that day, but I will catch up on another signing. If you get a book that day, I will find a way to get my signature in it if you want it.

Our deepest gratitude. Cheers the present, and the future of the deepest meaning, of all that matters in being deeply human.

Bravo Dr. Bob. Thank you so much for letting me and the rest of us tag along.