“Are those…baked beans…on my kitchen ceiling, Grandmother?” It was my mom’s perturbed voice. You could also tell when she was perturbed by how she called somebody. Granny Grace—my great grandmother—was always just Granny, or maybe occasionally Gracie, but ‘Grandmother’ was the moniker mom used when Gracie did something vexing. Come to think of it, Gracie … Continue reading Family Story: Baked Beans on the Ceiling
Memphis
Music Story: Remembering Aretha
This morning I listened to a rare interview with Aretha Franklin, talking about what it was like growing up the daughter of a celebrated pastor who was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr., and who routinely hosted Nat King Cole and others of his ilk in the Franklin home. The interview included an excerpt … Continue reading Music Story: Remembering Aretha
The Stories Our Scars Tell
What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, goes the saying. When my kiddo was only a peanut he took a bad spill in the foyer of our Knoxville home and landed face first on an unforgiving surface. His cheek met the pointy corner of a single step leading from the foyer into the kitchen of … Continue reading The Stories Our Scars Tell
Mom Is Human: a Memphis Memory
/ˌSHto͝orm o͝on(d) ˈdraNG/ noun – turbulent emotion or stress. In the eastern suburbs of Memphis, Tennessee, you can tell a tornado’s coming—or at the very least a horrific storm—long before the civil defense sirens sound. The wind picks up red soil from rice farmers’ fields over in West Memphis, Arkansas, near the western shores of … Continue reading Mom Is Human: a Memphis Memory
Family Vacations: The Summers of My Discontent
Nothing sends me into a tailspin faster than a technological mishap: this would include power outages and car problems, to say nothing of broken laptops. I’ve been in a tailspin since the first week in August, the week my shiny new laptop failed catastrophically on a Saturday morning, an incident that prompted a series of … Continue reading Family Vacations: The Summers of My Discontent
The Boldness of Eccentricity: A Remembrance
The woman standing at the front of the classroom never suffers fools gladly. Instead she writes theorems on the green chalkboard rapidly, with her back turned to a roomful of privileged ninth grade girls at this pressure cooker prep school in Memphis, girls poised for success in one venue or another. She is lean, a … Continue reading The Boldness of Eccentricity: A Remembrance
Home is where Your Heart Is: I Heart Vermont, Kinda
It just doesn’t always heart me back. The man rapping his knuckles against my car window had no teeth. He wore unbuttoned flannel over a filthy shirt and baggy trousers, which were held aloft over his pot belly by a pair of suspenders; his scruffy beard betrayed a recent snack. It was broad daylight in … Continue reading Home is where Your Heart Is: I Heart Vermont, Kinda
Swan Lake, You Rock My World.
Prologue I wish I could rewind a particular winter night about a dozen years ago at the Kennedy Center. I wish I could find all the people who were sitting in the right section of the orchestra at the opera house there, people who thought they were about to enjoy a memorable performance of Swan Lake, and tell … Continue reading Swan Lake, You Rock My World.
Forgotten Books, Forever Friends, & Harper Lee
In Memphis and other parts of the South and Midwest powerful storms are inseparable from the spring and summer landscape. Once upon a time civil defense sirens meant a tornado, prompting the requisite sequestration of our family in a tiny downstairs bathroom under piles of pillows. By age six or so I learned to fear any old thunderstorm that … Continue reading Forgotten Books, Forever Friends, & Harper Lee
Dancing in the Company of Giants
Robbins was more immediately successful than Balanchine, but the two together...when I think that we had them both! What a combination! We were incredibly lucky. —Violette Verdy In fall of 1969 Memphis Ballet School and its company had not long occupied the second floor of a mainly spent Depression-era building at the at the corner of … Continue reading Dancing in the Company of Giants
Sycamore Stories 