I've just launched a new website called Carolina Thinklings and hope you'll hop over and take a peek. Chef David and I and Scout-the-Goldapeake-Retriever are settling into our new digs on the North Carolina coast and will have lots of stories to tell about our reboot here. Maybe I'll add new posts to Sycamore Stories … Continue reading Thanks for Reading Sycamore Stories!
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Use Descriptive Writing to Improve All Your Writing
This week I'm publishing a little piece over on LinkedIn about how mastering descriptive writing makes you a better writer overall; just follow the link.
Afternoon Miniature 6.14.20
Lucy leaned over the sink to bring her face closer to the mirror, the better to apply her shimmering pink lipstick. Tiny wrinkles had started to come at the outside corners of her eyes, only just, but added more interest than age to her face. Earlier she’d swept her ebony hair into a French twist, … Continue reading Afternoon Miniature 6.14.20
A Memory: Living Like the One Percent
The main condition for the design, we said to the contractor standing in our Knoxville back yard 15 years ago, is for the pool to look like it’s been here since the house was built, in 1926. Yes, he said, he thought he could do that. No vast expanse of boring white concrete pool deck, … Continue reading A Memory: Living Like the One Percent
Journal Entry: Sunday, Muddy Sunday
Yesterday Chef David made lefse, a traditional Norwegian flatbread. He comes by it honestly. And I can't resist it. While I was in the other room folding clothes he sailed in with a folded corner of it, steaming hot, butter dripping out of it and all over the floor, and crammed it into my mouth. … Continue reading Journal Entry: Sunday, Muddy Sunday
A Food Memory: Do You Cook with Your Kids?
“You must know a lot about Southern cooking.” Chef David’s voice came cracking across the miles, over the Green Mountains, through an iffy cellular connection that tied me to him, from the Upper Valley all the way down to the Southwest corner of the state. I barely knew him at the time, but we clocked … Continue reading A Food Memory: Do You Cook with Your Kids?
Journal Entry: The Earth Grows Restless and Begins to Shift
And the days grow notably shorter. It had to happen eventually, I suppose. But the poison parsnip is dead, and good riddance to it. “I don’t suppose your leaves have started turning yet,” mused my dad at the other end of a cell phone connection about a week ago. “No,” I said, “but just last … Continue reading Journal Entry: The Earth Grows Restless and Begins to Shift
Sunday Photo Essay: Human Nature
Listening to one of my favorite radio shows not long ago I was gobsmacked by this notion: we often think of nature as separate from us, a thing we must protect, else destroy. But the truth is, we humans are also part of nature, and not separate from it. I latched onto that notion right away, because … Continue reading Sunday Photo Essay: Human Nature
Snowless Winter: A Walk in the Woods
The woods are lovely, dark and deep—Robert Frost Mt. Equinox looms over the Vermont Valley at 3,816 feet, the highest point of the Taconic Range, a finger of the Appalachians, and the oldest mountains in the country: Mother Myrick Mountain lies to its north, and Red Mountain to the South, the place we call home. Everywhere are … Continue reading Snowless Winter: A Walk in the Woods
Happy Birthday to Us
Only eight days separate my birthday and Handsome Chef Boyfriend's. That is excuse enough for eight days' worth of prolonged celebrating, give or take. I suppose one could argue birthday celebrations really should not be a big deal at our age. But since people over thirty usually whine about ageing instead of celebrating it, making … Continue reading Happy Birthday to Us
Sycamore Stories 