We went to see the Mister Rogers documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” Everything we read and heard warned us to be ready to cry. One friend told me she […]
Today is my 54th birthday. Fifty-four is not that exciting a number. It doesn’t signify anything in particular. It’s not even prime. But it’s substantial. You make it to 54, […]
I jumped straight out of my chair — my highest vertical leap since I was a teenager, a good solid three or four inches. My old roommate Zane looked at […]
I read 24 books this year. To be more exact, I guess, I finished 24 books this year — I’ve got a few more scattered around the house, but I’m […]
This year, for the first time in a long time, I bought a day planner. I toted it everywhere and put stickers on it and felt nice and solid and analog. […]
One night last week we were at my mother-in-law’s house, and I was washing dishes after supper. She lives on a mountain ridge in east Tennessee, and up there it […]
(I gave this talk the other night as part of an art gathering down in Rock Hill, South Carolina. I’m mainly posting this as a reminder to myself about how […]
Two and a half years ago, I had a drink with a new guy in town. Joe O’Connor had just started as president and general manager of WFAE, the NPR […]
Here’s my new story for the great magazine Garden & Gun on Vince Dooley, the former football coach at the University of Georgia, who has found a new obsession late […]
So I was on the phone with my friend Joe Posnanski today, and we were talking about how the Home Run Derby the night before the All-Star Game is now […]
On Thursday we wrapped up my first magazine-writing class at Wake Forest University. I had such a great group — 19 students from all over the country who walked into […]
I spent election night alone in a Raleigh hotel. An interview didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would. The rest of the night didn’t turn out the way […]