Forklift
I see Red
A Perci Red pourover on a Tuesday morning is a gift, in any season. In the spirit of a spring-like December, it’s manna from coffee heaven. Gone, for now, at least in this roast, is the Belgian chocolate chaser I got last week. In its place, a meaty, citrusy serenity, and a late suggestion of cinnamon toast.
My Mother Is a Chicken
The way my mother cooks fried chicken, it’s impossible, now, for me to determine where it begins and she ends. My mother and her chicken are inseparably one and the same, to the point I often and lovingly meld the two into one.
A bean to pick
The beans are picked from Gesha plants (an Ethiopian variety) rooted in Panamanian soil. All of which must matter, and does.
Ian Frazier at the Hurley Library
The first thing I ever read by Ian Frazier was his piece in The Atlantic on Minneapolis’ Mall of America. It was in a care package my sister-in-law brought over when she came to France to visit in the spring of ’02. By then, Frazier had already written Great Plains and On the Rez, his two books on the Sioux and other tragic aspects American West.
’Til Death do us part
Todd Zuniga’s Literary Death Match came to town and I was lucky to be among the four combatants. The rules of engagement: Two writers square off and read for seven minutes each, of which one advances to round two. Then, two more. I read in the second, versus ultimate winner Sloan Davis of Nimrod, the Tulsa-based lit journal.
Brace yourself
“He’s cute,” said Reta, about to jam her fingers in my son’s mouth. And I began to wonder for how long. Would he still be cute and 7 when the hour was up? I distracted myself by looking out the picture window, where the creek meandered through a stand of golden-leafed oaks. I said something about the scenery, leaving the orthodontics to the pros.
There’s the beef
If the butcher’s shop is back, we might do well to ask where it went. Growing up, I never experienced the craftsman’s hand at the butcher block. By the time I started buying meat on my own, it was all cellophane and styrofoam.
That’s the spirit
Lastly, certainly not leastly, we sampled Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky—the malt meant to replicate the whisky Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton carried onboard the Nimrod during the British Antarctic Expedition of 1907-09.
K Syrah, syrah
Charles in charge: Bret Masterson and me in Charles Smith’s Walla Walla wine cellar. Photo by Cynthia Masterson. How’s this for an assignment: This Land sent me to Walla Walla, Washington, home of K Vintners (“Kung Fu Girl” Riesling) to find out why winemaker Charles Smith came to Tulsa and bared his soul (he proposed to his wife at the [...]
