Autumn is a competitive season. Football, politics, World Series, cooking shows. But I have a flaw in my personality: I can’t talk smack. I never could. And all of these competitive events apparently require competent smack talk to fully appreciate the enjoyment they provide. But whenever I try, it comes out stilted or inauthentic or…
My mother knew how to make every holiday (and every day) special. Often, in college when I was stressed about exams or boys or other high-priority college stressors, my mother would come to town and take me on a pumpkin hunting trip. This was a great distraction technique (on which she should have written a…
There is a certain magic created when a successful book is picked up for a blockbuster movie and set in a picture-perfect location where visitors can roam and admire and stand in the footsteps of their literary heroes. To immerse ourselves in something grand that carries a mystique of history or art is irresistible. Plus,…
This past summer my husband and I spent a weekend at Wintergreen Resort. The highlight of the trip was a hike led by an expert at The Nature Foundation at Wintergreen. John, our guide, led our straggly group of twelve strangers on the hike while explaining the geological history of the area and the notorious…
Belmont Mansion is a one-hundred-and-seventy-year-old mansion in Nashville, Tennessee. Its salmon-colored, exterior walls and grand interior staircase eloquently mask the fact that this house was built by Adelicia Hayes, the widow of one of the most successful slave traders in American history, who owned approximately seven hundred and fifty slaves over three plantations in Tennessee…
I’m a bit haunted by Mother’s Day—a difficult day for me at times. Over the past decade or so, I’ve come to terms with the fact that I am now motherless and am myself a child-free adult (that’s a fancy new term I just learned this week!). Both facts can be a source of some…
