A remembrance and a haiku for the intrepid little lady we lost, Ruth Violet Hiatt Holt.

My grandmother is 100 today, a bona fide centenarian. Wow!

A poem dedicated to my brother, a victim of suicide, who suffered in silence. Call the suicide prevention hotline at 800-273-8255.

Remembering storms whose names have spawned headlines and headaches, headstones and heartache, hardships and heroism. And wondering, why do we have to name storms after people? Why not use diseases or the periodic table? Or colors?

Each year, memories fly out of these treasures like dust motes in the light and gently come to rest on me.

I remember my brother now more with joy at what was than sadness about what will never be.

Gumbo is a family treasure, seashells elicit childhood memories, and these napkin rings made with shells we found 40 years ago bring echoes of the past into the now.

October 16 is a special day. RIP Oscar Wilde and Dad.

Still Life: Seashells with Shellac on a Paper Bag.

A poem by Gordon Parks speaks of curiosity, wonder, celebration of life and nature, and the awesome, simple, dead-on-target mindfulness of children.

A footprint, a feather and a leaf, about to be swept away. Remembering my brother in a haiku.

A 7th grade essay sums up how gumbo got started for us: “My family has a 35-year history with gumbo.” Part 2 of a series.

I have hundreds of cookbooks. Literally. It’s Mom’s Fault (thanks, Mom!) I’m a cookbook collector, or maybe even a cookbook pack rat. It might be a bit of a sickness. I’ve tried to slow it down, but for a while there, I was on a […]

My Mom always hated January. Too cold. Too damp. Too boring. This is the first post in a series: January Dreaming.

Paul Prudhomme’s cookbooks started a family tradition, and K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen is part of it.

Family-memory stories gain a patina with age and become the stuff of legend. The Story of Chicken is one of those stories.

My dad was born 80 years ago today in West Texas as the Great Depression was coming to an end in the shadow of another Great War in Europe, a time before regular Americans realized we’d be involved in that war. With that backdrop and […]

An elegy for three, from the one remaining. They live in my heart-theater, their voices all trumpets and whispers and hugs.

Business trip serendipity. Fireworks and haiku. Memories. Good times. Edinburgh rocks.

For people like me, there’s a sense of loss from the abrupt ending of Anthony Bourdain’s huge contribution to the canons of travel, food and cultural understanding, and a reluctant but absolutely unavoidable comparison to our own unwelcome experiences with the savage, raw, rollercoaster aftermath of suicide.