Last weekend, on a long ride home from a very long awards banquet, I was happy to see a giant full moon in the evening sky. Maybe you heard about last Saturday’s moon, which seemed larger than usual because the moon was passing closer to Earth. I saw the moon in fields over farming country near Marksville, … Continue reading →

In a previous life as a movie reviewer and theater critic, I was sometimes asked to write about period productions that had been placed in a modern setting. Maybe an ancient Greek tragedy would be re-imagined in a trailer park. Shakespeare’s “Richard III” might cast the title villain not as an old English king, but a contemporary … Continue reading →

For a brief period of my life, I was obliged to spend a couple of days in Boston each year on business. Boston is, in many ways, the cradle of the American Revolution, and my visits allowed me a little time to see some of the places so important to the founding of the republic. One of … Continue reading →

Shortly after I started college nearly 30 years ago, I was assigned to read a poem that made me ask if college was worth the trouble. Nothing much happens in William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow,” in which the narrator describes a red wheelbarrow “glazed with rain / water / beside the white / chickens.” You … Continue reading →

Three weeks ago, at the end of a day filled with deadlines, homework, and the hundred other worries that touch a typical family, I answered a personal obligation that took me inside our neighborhood church, which was quiet, mostly empty and still. I know the church best as a Sunday place, when the pews … Continue reading →

Although Easter is supposed to be a holiday of spring, the end of Lent in south Louisiana often seems to drop us at the door of summer instead. Regardless of what the calendar says, I know that summer has arrived when I can no longer cut the grass without breaking a sweat. Last Saturday, damp with … Continue reading →

Like many people, I bring out Charles Dickens each December, along with the yuletide tinsel and garland, then pack him away with the holiday decorations once New Year’s has passed. Dickens enters our household each Christmas through “A Christmas Carol,” his famous story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s overnight reform one Christmas Eve. I’m foolish for … Continue reading →

Last Saturday, as I was standing at my kitchen window and talking with my brother on the telephone, a large turtle strolled up to the porch and clambered over my stoop. The phone connection was spotty, and as I tried to parse every word through a cloud of static, I didn’t want to confuse the … Continue reading →

Only recently did I learn that Lent, a season steeped in the virtues of doing with less, stems from a word about the promise of more. “Lent” is drawn from ancient root words for “long day,” a reference to the lengthening days as spring brings more sunlight to the waking hours. I’ve been thinking about all of … Continue reading →

On the last Sunday of February, a few hours before the Oscars unfolded to a waiting world, I drove a few blocks from my house to see my niece play in the Louisiana Junior Youth Orchestra. The afternoon reminded me that at a certain point in young people’s lives, watching them perform becomes a pleasure rather than … Continue reading →

Come December, the newspaper cartoonists will depict 2012 like they do any dying year: as on old man, bearded in white, waiting for Baby New Year to take his place. The thought of a year as a man marching towards maturity interests me, and I have been wondering, in these early days of March, what a portrait … Continue reading →

Last Saturday morning, as rain drummed the roof and a cold February wind beat the patio palms to rags, I knew that gumbo weather had arrived for the weekend. Gumbo weather, as you know, describes a day so gray and wet that only a pot of something warm can properly sustain body and soul. … Continue reading →

I often read to learn something, but there are other times when I open a book, magazine or newspaper simply because I want to hear the voice of a writer I like. Sue Hubbell is that kind of writer for me. I read her regardless of her chosen subject, for no other reason than the chance … Continue reading →

Walk into any corner drugstore this week, and you’ll find the aisles abloom with red — the bright crimson of heart-shaped candy boxes and over-sized greeting cards for Valentine’s Day. I welcome the bright scarlet of this lover’s holiday and the relief it brings to the pipe-gray doldrums of late winter. But after … Continue reading →

My Aunt Eunice, who’s 94, hasn’t been feeling well lately, so she spends her time in a bed that overlooks several backyard bird feeders. Age and illness can make a mind retreat into better days when one was stronger, younger and free of pain, and there are hours when my aunt roves … Continue reading →

I read in the papers that some New Yorkers have been fretting about a lack of snow this winter. Although a lifelong Southerner, I understand that many people in colder parts of the world don’t think winter is worth the trouble unless it includes lots of white flakes falling from the sky. What I like best … Continue reading →

Like many people who live in this part of the world, I’ve flown into Atlanta many times on the way to someplace else. I’ve stayed only twice — once, some two decades ago, while covering a convention, and then again, last week, when I met friends there for a long weekend. My wife and I got … Continue reading →

Last month, our 11-year-old son finished the year in the 15th century, plodding the Atlantic with Christopher Columbus in search of fame and fortune. As part of a class project, our fifth-grader was required to make a model of the kind of ship Columbus and his contemporaries might have used to travel to the New World. With … Continue reading →

I started my Christmas season in Alabama this year, where I learned of some good work being done by the Birmingham Audubon Society, including a program to teach local school children about nature. The society loans binoculars to youngsters, then walks them through the basics of bird-watching. After their lessons, many students have asked for their own … Continue reading →

Living in 19th-century New England, Henry David Thoreau couldn’t trot off to the tropics when winters in his native Massachusetts got too cold for comfort. He made himself feel warmer by thumbing through bird books. “Books of natural history make the most cheerful winter reading,” he remarked a century and a half ago. “I read … Continue reading →

B.B. Stirling wanted me to know that although longtime English teacher Druci Balkom might be gone, her legacy is going strong. I’d written a column about Balkom, who taught at St. Joseph’s Academy for 45 years before retiring last year. She died recently at age 73, which reminded me of the visits I had made to … Continue reading →

Although we talk about the joy of being home for the holidays, we tend to spend less time at home in December than in any other month of the year. Shopping, school programs, holiday parties and visits to relatives — all of these things conspire to keep us on the road and away from the family … Continue reading →

Before she retired in 2010, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman ended each year with a column about the books she’d enjoyed in the previous 12 months. Not necessarily the year’s best books, mind you — just a few titles that had caught her attention and favor. Goodman’s tradition was a good reminder that reading should … Continue reading →

On All Saints Day last week, a special time for Christians to honor their dead, my wife’s family stood at a graveside and said goodbye to Sue Langlinais, a treasured aunt who had died suddenly a few days earlier after a long and happy life. As we stood among the tombstones of a Lafayette cemetery for … Continue reading →

Halloween officially concluded Monday, and I’m doing my best to put it away for another year. I pitched our moldering jack-o’-lanterns into the compost pile, removed the orange lights from our porch door and brought the surplus candy to the office so I won’t eat it all myself. Getting rid of the surplus Halloween … Continue reading →

As I was reminded after a trip to the theater last week, reports of Mark Twain’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Twain seemed very much alive in the person of Hal Holbrook, who brought his celebrated one-man show, “Mark Twain Tonight!,” to the Baton Rouge River Center Theater last Friday. Holbrook took the stage … Continue reading →

Because I write for a living, I’m sometimes asked to speak about my work. None of those experiences has been more demanding — and more rewarding — than my visits to the English classes taught by Drusilla Balkom, a longtime Baton Rouge educator who died recently at age 73. Balkom, known as Druci to her friends, … Continue reading →

A couple of Sundays ago, I was awakened not by an alarm clock or the dawn slowly seeping through my curtains, but by the faint wail of a train off in the distance. I live pretty far from the railroad tracks, and on most days of the year, trains are too remote to reach my ears. … Continue reading →

We’re getting a new computer system at work, and I just took 12 hours of training to learn how to use it. The training for the first piece of office equipment I ever used was considerably shorter. When, as a high school student, I started my … Continue reading →

Much of the best nature writing about Louisiana has been done by authors who live somewhere else. Luckily, we also have writers within the state who deftly chronicle its natural beauty. Mary Ann Sternberg’s “Winding Through Time,” which is about Bayou Manchac, and Oliver Houck’s “Down on The Batture,” which touches on the Mississippi River, are two … Continue reading →

After news broke that the Borders bookstore chain was closing its doors, I thought I’d better use my Borders gift certificate before it was too late. The mood at the Borders near my office was understandably somber, with a “Going Out of Business” banner strung across the storefront and long-faced clerks stacking deeply discounted books onto sales … Continue reading →

On the last weekend of our children’s summer vacation, we adopted an 8-year-old rat terrier named Foster from another household. I’m trying, from force of habit, to fix my story in time and place, although chronology, as far as I can tell, doesn’t mean very much to a rat terrier. It seems that regardless of what the … Continue reading →

I’ve been wondering this week if the state should consider observing Labor Day on a different date than the rest of the country. Arriving as it does in the depths of hurricane season, the present date for Labor Day doesn’t promise the best results for the Gulf Coast. When Labor Day arrived in 2005, we were still … Continue reading →

As a child, I was always vaguely surprised to discover that my teachers had lives away from the classroom. Spotting a teacher at church, the store or a local festival raised my eyebrows in a shock of recognition, as if I’d come across a rare bird transplanted from its native habitat. My surprise from those days now … Continue reading →

Our family recently adopted Foster, an 8-year-old rat terrier, and on his second Sunday with us, we noticed that Foster was not himself. He had little interest in his principal joys, walking the neighborhood and chasing balls. Mostly, what he wanted to do was sit. We wondered if our new pet was OK, but by the next morning, … Continue reading →

My personal calendar has not just one New Year, but several. Like everyone else, I greet Jan. 1 as a day to look at my life with fresh eyes and resolve to do better, but that sense of optimism usually wanes as winter does. So I turn to the start of Lent as an alternate New Year of … Continue reading →

I rarely read as much at the beach as I think I will. Even so, when our family spent a week at the beach last month, I managed to start – and finish – William Zinsser’s “Writing Places: The Life Journey of A Writer and Teacher.” The relative brevity of Zinsser’s book, which comes in at … Continue reading →

When our family arrived in Gulf Shores, Ala., for a beach vacation last week, we found plenty of company. Traffic was bumper to bumper entering Gulf Shores and equally heavy when we left. The beach seemed more crowded than in previous visits — an indication, maybe, that tourists were making up for their absences from the … Continue reading →

One of my favorite pieces of writing about summer is in “A Death in the Family,” James Agee’s largely autobiographical 1957 novel about what happens when a family loses its father and husband. The subject of the book is ironic because Agee (pronounced AY-jee) died in 1955, two years before “A Death in the Family” was published. Continue reading →

David McCullough is one of America’s most popular and prolific authors, with a string of acclaimed history books to his credit, including “The Greater Journey,” his new book about Americans in Paris from 1830 to 1900. “People always ask me, ‘How much time do you spend researching, and how much time do you spend writing,’” McCullough told … Continue reading →

Spend a long weekend along False River in New Roads, as I recently did for the Fourth of July, and you’ll recognize False River’s two biggest pastimes: Skimming the water in a pleasure craft, or watching the procession of boats from the shaded comfort of a front-porch rocker. I’ve enjoyed both in my stays at False River, … Continue reading →