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Category: Everything Else

Waffle House

Efficiency

Or: Lessons Learned in a Waffle House at Shift Change First, let’s address the herd of elephants in the room. It’s been more than a year and a half since I updated Zeitgeist. I’ve also been woefully neglectful of Finding Machu Picchu, as well. But there are reasons, both good and bad, for having been so neglectful.…
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Acquisitions I: Souvenirs from a life with art

My first encounter with art happened on a staircase landing. Sometime in the late Spring of 2002, I an invitation to a gallery opening from Carol Parsons. I had done an article on her home, Layton’s Castle, and during the attached photo shoot, we shared cocktails in her library. We spent the better part of…
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Brutalist Birthing Center

Or: How I learned to stop looking to live with reusable project pieces For a time, my daughter issued an edict: I could no longer say “mid-century modern” or any permutation thereof, including but not limited to MidCentury, MCM, or the diminutive “mid-mod.” She had grown tired of hearing me gush about this warehouse find or that…
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When the heat is a sulter?

Or: On Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner and the English Language There’s an old joke that goes something like this: Why did the broke writer pay $5 for a latte at Starbucks? How else would everyone get to see him writing his novel? Sitting in a Starbucks before the mountain of pulp totaling some 350 pages, I’m slogging through…
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A family illness

While I’m a fan of many sports, and my following of these sports is quite tidal, there are three bloodsports in my life that return time and again. I will follow these sports rigorously for a time, take a break if the talent wanes, and return again at some point to again root for my…
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Technology Retrograde

Or: Why we need frontiers to succeed as a species. One of my favorite television shows is AMC’s Mad Men. For the three people on the planet unfamiliar with the hit drama, the story revolves around the lives and work of a group of advertising executives at the height of the Madison Avenue golden age,…
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The joys of a french press

For years, I was one of those people who looked at the glass and steel lines of a French press sitting in the corner of a friend’s fancy-dancy kitchen with about the same look of condescension that I shot at countertop pasta machines. I mean, seriously, people. Why does a simple cup of coffee require…
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Papaw’s Typewriter

Papaw’s study is perhaps the most vivid of my childhood memories. Everything about that room — the heavy oak desk, the southeastern window, every surface piled high with papers — has a mystical pull upon the deepest recesses of my mind that walking through Office Depot will frequently turn into a trip back in time. A…
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Dreams of the Great Debate

NOTE: I’ve often heard or read of writers describing the vivid dreams that led them to write their great novels. Sadly, only twice have such dreams happened to me. The second occurred two nights ago. I’m just now writing about it. Enjoy. -md   There was a great debate raging in that space that exists…
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Confessions of a bibliophile.

Or: Why the hell isn’t there a Bookaholics Anonymous group? I have a secret. A dark, unspoken secret. I am an addict. My addiction is not to drugs. Cocaine will you not find in any blood panel. I enjoy a good drink, but I am not an alcoholic. I don’t even smoke very often. Yet,…
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