Arts & Culture
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I was born into a grand culinary experiment—one that began in the hardscrabble kitchens of the Great Depression and evolved through American ingenuity into a postwar paradise of processed food. In those lean years, dietitians emerged as unlikely heroes. While most people scraped by on rations and ingenuity, the stewards of nutrition saw opportunity. With…
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A well-meaning friend once told me to dance like no one is watching. It didn’t take. I dance like people are watching. I was dancing at a wedding recently, (Apache, Jump on it) and it occurred to me that no one cares what I look like when I dance. I know this because if they…
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I’ve always wanted to be a famous writer, not prolific like John Grisham, but rather famously obscure, like J.D. Salinger, only with less baggage and regrets. Being famous seems like a lot of trouble. Fortunately, like most people, I’m famously not famous, not unlike another writer, Flora Macdonald Mayor, who wrote The Rector’s Daughter 100…
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People ask me, “What are you doing in Denver?” I tell them I’m helping Karen Taylor and Tammy Ross cook 700 meals for our youth group from Bartlesville, with very little refrigerator space which means I’m on a first name basis with grocery clerks on Colorado avenue. In the midst of cooking, washing dishes, and…
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Karen and I were driving through Wisconsin farmland a couple of years ago, and I was overcome by pastoral splendor although it may have been too many cheese curds. I began singing America the Beautiful, like Ray Charles, because after all, my middle name is Ray. I’ve always loved that song. It’s not ambivalent, it resolves,…
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I have two brothers. My brother the doctor has spent some time in jail. But he got better…more on that later. The younger is a preacher who has written several books. I have always wanted to write a novel. I’ve started at least a dozen novels in my mind but none have gotten past page…
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My wife travels with me and my golf partner, Shawn Barker…not because she loves golf. She simply loves the surroundings and the time spent wandering places like Flagstaff and Monterey and Santa Rosa. After a yoga session in Santa Rosa this past week, she sat alone in a coffee shop and a man across the…
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Word. Word is a strange word…the longer you stare at it, the odder it becomes. Stranger still is the moment you hear correct words in a song after many years of singing the wrong words. Karen was making a Margherita pizza last night while singing Midnight Confession, a song by The Grass Roots from…
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I tagged along with Karen to a yoga studio in Denver on our vacation. On the mat next to Karen is a woman who lives in Connecticut, although she grew up in Red Bank, NJ. Karen grew up in New Jersey and we lived in Tabernacle, NJ during our early years of marriage. We are…
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