A certain ‘smart speaker’ makes quick book purchases a tad too easy, doesn’t she? Open email, flip through the Times book review, ask her to buy it now, and Bam! an exciting new read (or a pile of ‘em) shows up on your doorstep in a day or two. To make matters worse, I happen to be a hardcover snob and relent to a paperback … Continue reading Reflection: Exploring the Deep South (Slowly) With Paul Theroux
This morning I experimented with a new bread recipe that came in two steps, the first a starter to make the night before, and then the balance to make the next morning. I was trying to replicate a Tuscan loaf I bought locally that was so, so good. This does not resemble it at all, but I must say, is so, so much better. Given … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: Trying Something New
Memories that pop up in social feeds can be cruel, but as often they’re so beautiful. Once in a while, images surface as reminders Chef David and I somehow found time to do things together, a lot of things, in the chapter that was life in Vermont. But leisure time seems so elusive somehow in this chapter. We’ve been in our new house for a … Continue reading Reflection: Piloting Through Chapter and Verse
It has been a while since I exercised my camera and my eye and so today I decided to capture what was a fairly typical Sunday in our household. It is quiet but not, relaxing but busy. When we put off Sunday chores we pay for that decision all week long. Scoutie and I started our morning outdoors while David was at work, a job … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Domestic Arts
It is Monday, the first full day in my week-long visit to Dad’s place down in Chattanooga, to his comfortable house in the suburbs (more properly in Ringgold, just over the Georgia state line) he shares with Sheryl, his lovely wife of many years. These travel plans have been in the works since way back in the fall; Sheryl and her two daughters who straddle … Continue reading Reflection: A Father’s Day Gift
What is it about permanence that is so alluring on the one hand, and so vexing on the other. When my kiddo was tiny, he developed an appetite for drawing and coloring with permanent markers because they were forbidden. If his tiny fingers found their way around a Sharpie, in short order I’d have to pry it loose and then replace it with a less-desirable … Continue reading Reflection: The Places That Mark Us Indelibly
But it has been a bad season for pollen, even the locals say so. And even though we’re now locals too, we’re still too green (or yellow, as the case may be) to know what qualifies as “bad” for spring pollen in coastal North Carolina. Evidently this does. Our new home has a screened porch adjacent to the open interior living space on the first … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: Life’s Been Pretty Good Lately
Tabby is a type of concrete made by burning oyster shells to create lime, then mixing it with water, sand, ash and broken oyster shells. —Wikipedia “Maybe we ought to build a wall instead of a fence.” The words spilled out of me suddenly as they’re wont to do, even though the thought had been knocking around in my head for a while. Chef David … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: We Need Lowcountry Tabby Concrete
Art has something to do with the arrest of attention in the midst of distraction. —George Plimpton And what is writing after all, but art. Betcha Mr. Plimpton’s right. It’s as plausible an explanation as any for my utter unwillingness to sit down on a Sunday and put pen to paper, as I’m wont to do most Sundays: distractions. Just ask any self-respecting dog about … Continue reading Sunday Almanac: Distractions for Weeks
However you think of Garrison Keillor’s indiscretion, the one that got him dismissed from NPR, no bad behavior can eclipse his storytelling talent, and that is the truth. Who among us has never been lost in a news monologue from fictional Lake Wobegon, who hasn’t nodded along silently or smiled at a yarn about some character’s ill-wrought decisions and the unfortunate but hysterical consequences of … Continue reading A Memory: When Fresh Food Still Had Flavor
Carolina Thinklings 