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Bourdain and Sunday Supper

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On June 8, 2018

In writing

IN MEMORIAM

Anthony Bourdain visits the Build Series to discuss “Raw Craft” at AOL HQ on November 2, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Mike Pont/WireImage)

Anthony Bourdain taught me to look deeper into what I eat, what it says about me, and how to find empathy at the dinner table.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post originally appeared on an earlier iteration of this blog and was published on June 3, 2012. Today (June 8, 2018), news broke that Anthony Bourdain was found dead in France of an apparent suicide. 

Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations has long been a favorite show of mine. It’s one of the few television series that has earned the “season pass” setting on my DVR, which means I’ve instructed the Great TV Wizard who lives in the satellite box below my wide screen to seek out every new episode he can find and bring it back for my own viewing pleasure. I love the Great TV Wizard.

All of that’s about to change, though. Bourdain, who has been the darling child of the Travel Channel since his show broke out in 2005, has been poached by (of all channels) CNN. Travel didn’t renew No Reservations. Anderson Cooper snagged him. Even good things come to an end.

What I have long appreciated about Bourdain’s show is his thesis statement that food is a cornerstone of humanity. I saw it in the very first episode I stumbled upon, in which Tony toured Jamaica. What we eat, how we eat it, where we eat it, and with whom we eat it speaks volumes about who we are.

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Kathryn Stripling Byer

In Memoriam: Kathryn Stripling Byer

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On June 6, 2017

In writing

IN MEMORIAM

 

A poet who sang, who shared, but above all, who inspired.

 

I have a clear memory from the end of a British Lit course in college: we were packing up our things, and the professor called me to the podium to hand back a poem I’d given him the week before. “It’s good,” he said. “And the poet of the house likes it, too.”

The professor was easily among my favorites, and as anyone knows by now a young writer handing his verse to an inspiring teacher needs only “good” to make his day. But the second part–the part about the poet of the house–meant even more.

That poet, Kathryn Stripling Byer, would later become the first female Poet Laureate of North Carolina and a member of our state’s Literary Hall of Fame. She passed away today after a brief illness.

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Zoe in 2012

Good Dog.

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On February 20, 2017

In writing

FAMILY

Of life, and death, and a dog that was there for so much of it.

When I came downstairs last night to check on the dogs and lock up the basement, I had a sense that something wasn’t going to be right.

It had been a beautiful Saturday, warm and bright, and I’d spent the day working in the yard, putting out mulch and cleaning things up. The kids joined me at times, swinging and running around the yard, but most of the day it was just the dogs and me. Taylor, our youngest dog (although still coming up on her tenth birthday), followed me around. Zoe, our oldest, mostly slept in the sun.

Zoe, whom Kelly adopted in 2002, had had a rough go of it for the last six weeks. Just after the Christmas holiday, I’d come home to find her hobbling around on three legs, one of her back legs jutting out at an awkward angle. A trip to the vet confirmed only grim details: it would take surgery to fix the leg, and given that she was nearly 15 years of age and that she’d developed an obvious heart murmur, there wasn’t much point.

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