The kitchen of your mama’s house in Alabama is not the best place to announce to your family – all human and animal doctors whose lives are full of horses, cattle, and dogs — that you are about to embark on home vermiculture. Especially if you phrase it, casually, “Hey, y’all, when I get back […]
Read more“Southern or not, we all live somewhere on a continuum between Tofurky and Terducken.” — Bob Rini Today the news broke that Paula Deen has Type 2 diabetes. <Pause for Inner Moral Battle that probably ends with Guilty, Helpless Succumbing to Pithy/Catty Line about Oh, The Irony.> Me, I immediately flashed on the recent MLA […]
Read moreEvery year, fresh from days away at my family home where there are friendly differences about — shall we say — organizing styles, I return to my own little house and see the place with fresh eyes. Somehow, as good as I usually am about filing and purging, the place just looks full. The line […]
Read more“I’ve been a pastor for more than 15 years, and I am still amazed at folks in nursing homes, many unable to remember the majority of their own lives, who will begin to sing and nod and clap when they hear Christmas carols. O the power of music, on them and on me.” – Amy […]
Read moreToday, just before Christmas, finishing up my grading and trying to cut down on the caffeine that’s one of the many things spiking my blood pressure this month, I picked up a can of Coke from the cooler in our student union. Those who knew me in grad school, when I drank about a case […]
Read moreThe ghostly, homely faces of these beasts floated into my mind earlier last week when I misread a New York Times headline at the top of my webmail page. “Physicists will have to wait a little longer for Higgs Boson,” the tagline read. Of course, I read it first as “Higgs Bison.” But considering what […]
Read moreBack in September, as I was experiencing my first tentative steps into relative debt-free-ness, I received an email from a friend about a concert her husband was co-producing in Manhattan to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, called “Music After.” Anything you can send, she said, would help. I gave a small amount […]
Read moreGuess it was bound to happen eventually — the CI is now live on Facebook. Visit the page and click “like” if you have a Facebook account – I’d appreciate it! Periodically I’ll post random photos or links as “bonus tracks” to the regular postings here. Thanks as ever, y’all, for your love and support!
Read moreThis week I lost Annie the Cat. What other name could there be for an orange-haired kitty with a hard-knock life? She came to me about four years ago via my family from the cat shelter and before that from years of street life that had taken one eye and most of her teeth; her […]
Read more1) Seven Meyer lemons from my own little tree, now two years old. (The seventh one is still a little green at the tip, so I’m leaving it on there till the last minute. I think I’m going to use them to make the preserved lemons in Tart and Sweet.) Few things feel better than […]
Read more