Typecasting, Then and Now
Flea markets and swap meets are, for me anyway, as much fun for tripping down memory lane as hunting for bargains. At a recent antiques fair in my hometown of Petaluma, California, I stumbled across a toy that literally altered my destiny. Although it’s always disconcerting to realize that my life is someone else’s nostalgia, it was still comforting to spot a Junior Dial Typewriter like the one I got for Christmas in 1951 when I was a kid in Tennessee. For those too young to remember, these gizmos required turning a big dial to the desired letter or number and pressing a lever to make it strike the ink ribbon and paper. It was a tedious exercise that nevertheless held me in thrall for hours at a time, and I started banging out (very) short stories. By...
Read MoreThe Ultimate Webmaster
I rarely think about weddings, even in June, but I admit being excited for my friend Charlotte Wyatt who’s soon to marry Gordon Smith, her best friend since middle school. Since Charlotte and I both hail from Tennessee, I started thinking about some of the extravagant Southern nuptials I attended back in the ’60s when June weddings often looked like animated flower shows. They were pretty, very showy affairs but none remotely compared to an extravaganza in antebellum Louisiana that still has people talking. It was the brainchild of one Charles Durande. Durande was a rather mysterious Frenchman who appeared in New Orleans around 1820 and multiplied his already considerable wealth by becoming one of Louisiana’s largest sugar planters. He not only...
Read MoreNew Orleans BBQ Shrimp: Slow Food Fast
One of the goals of slow food aficionados is preserving traditional, regional cuisine. New Orleans has been doing this for almost three centuries, mainly because Creole food put down such deep, irrefutable roots. Thanks to Louisiana’s incredible natural bounty from rivers, forests, bayous, and the Gulf of Mexico, cooks from France, Spain and Africa were inspired to create America’s one true native cuisine. Their world-renowned gumbos, jambalayas and étouffées are as far from fast food as you can get, and the fact that millions of foodies still seek them out proves they’ve stood the test of time. When a handful of New Orleans chefs reconfigured classic recipes to fit the nouvelle cuisine demands of the ’70s, customers stayed away in droves...
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