Mama the Cook
Mama was not a very good cook. She was an inspirational schoolteacher, the kind to whom people sent tear-wrinkled letters of gratitude, years after they left her classroom. She pulled…
Read MoreCategory: Memoir
Mississippi eatin’
When I moved to rural Mississippi from downtown Los Angeles, I knew I was in for environmental shifts beyond just the absence of…
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New Year’s Eve
Crowds of people are not my idea of a good time. I like my space and I don’t like noise. Crowds of drunk…
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A note about “Letters from Clay”
(I joke a lot but what I’m about to tell you is not a joke.) A comment came in to my blog today….
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Roadside discomfort
The worst roadside restroom I ever visited was in northwest Indiana. It was 1989 and a friend and I were on a late-night…
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Hillary’s pneumonia, imagined
H, to Aide: “I feel shitty. Cancel that thing in the morning and get me in to see Dr. Y. Better yet, have…
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Dinner with Daniel Boulud
Some years ago — not too many years but two or three eyeglass prescriptions ago — I walked into a restaurant in New…
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Movie kitchens
My friend Rob, whose sharp eye and opinion I respect, put something on Facebook the other day about the kitchens of someone called…
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Chance encounters (Bill Clinton edition)
In yesterday’s news was a story involving a meeting that took place this week between former president Bill Clinton and U.S. Attorney General…
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A friend from the Navy (Part 1)
(Caution: contains coarse language) The story has been in the works too long, partly because it’s important to me and I wanted to…
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