Everyone should have a cousin Steve. Stephen Rayford was my first mentor, the first person who chose me and took me under their wing. At ten years old, Steve schooled me in the game of football as we watched Super Bowl XII between the Dallas Cowboys and the Denver Broncos in the winter of 1978.… Read More Everyone Should Have A Cousin Steve
Five years ago, I was a guest columnist embarking on an interactive weight-loss challenge chronicled in The Washington Post. As we close out National Gumbo Day, I’m sharing “Breaking The Connection Between Food And Emotions”, a piece I wrote during that period about Louisiana’s official state cuisine and the role it played at a pivotal point in… Read More National Gumbo Day
I walked down the long gravel driveway and crossed Old Highway 161. There on the other side of the road was our old haunt, The Sandpit. It was a big hole in the ground, about the size of a football field. For decades it had been dug into, deeper and deeper, to supply soil to… Read More SoulCreole: Ghosts in the Garden, Part 2
The screen door was hung tight, like all screen doors in the country seem to be, and it slammed as I walked out into the cold afternoon air. A striped-back chipmunk scurried past my feet at lightning speed, hanging an impossible left toward the carport wash room and a work table full of baskets of… Read More SoulCreole: Ghosts in the Garden, Part 1
