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Author: Michael

Blogging the Southern Experience

I live in the South. That doesn’t make me a redneck, a hick or a hillbilly. I am an American. I live in a (grantedly small) city of approximately 60,000. I attend theatre and symphonies and the ballet. I also know how to eat a steak, barbeque ribs, field dress a deer and run a…
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Bailout, Shmailout.

Or: Why the House was right to reject the $700 billion welfare bill. So let me get this straight. Congress rejects a $700 billion bailout bill and, in response, the stock market loses $1.2 TRILLION dollars? Something smells here — and it ain’t the caviar on my fancy French cheese or the better than decent…
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Sunday on the Couch with Football

A writing life is a slow life. It’s punctuated at times by periods of fierce activity but, for the most part, it is a life devoid of schedules. Your friends have to learn to accomodate the burst of creativity that sends you plunging for a notebook in the middle of dinner or the ubiquitous presence…
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And a New Chapter Begins

Or two of them, to be exact. First, Anything But Ordinary is on its way to the Publisher this week after a month and a half of delays. (Sorry, fans, for not taking quicker care with this thing but that’s where the second chapter comes in.) The second new chapter is what has made the first…
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On the remarkable symmetry of everyday life.

So Saturday, a friend of mine quit her job so she could hang out with me. No, this is not the start of a joke. And no, it wasn’t planned. Instead, it truly was a spur of the moment thing to spend some time together in Shreveport, a few hours down the road. Sure she…
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What to do on a sunday in Louisiana.

“I really need to get a life because I enjoy this shit too much.” I blink at Toni’s blunt pronouncement, made just loudly enough for the people at the other end of the plastic picnic table to glance our way, a perplexed look of surprise written on their faces. Immediately, I recognized the look as…
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A Wake For My Youth.

I officially became old today. And it’s not my birthday. Last night, at Karaoke with Judy, she noticed I kept moving my glasses farther and farther down my nose in order to read the small print in the songbook. Finally, she handed me her glasses and, voíla. I could see the text perfectly. So today,…
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Other People’s Drama

Once, while working as a marketing director for a non-profit, I decided I would one day write a one-hour T.V. program called “Other People’s Drama.” It would focus on the lives of a group of people who work in a volunteer organization and the way the drama of daily life can infect everything a group…
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On the Perfect Martini

Living in Louisiana, it’s hard to find a good Martini, much less a perfect one. When I ask for a Martini in a restaurant, I’m inevitably asked by the server, “What kind? We have apple-tinis, chocolatinis, Grandma’sSinusitustini’s.” I’m a purist. A quick visit over to Wikipedia will give any curious dipsomaniac a rundown on the…
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Let it snow?! You have GOT to be kidding me

The one day. THE ONE day I want decent weather, it snows…in Louisiana. In March. I have tickets to “The Producers” tonight, with plans to take my kid. I cannot overstate how much I love “The Producers”. It is one of my all-time favorite shows. And the kidlet even bought a new dress. Now for…
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