Community Book Merchants

Where would we be without our independent booksellers? When I lived in Raleigh, my second-favorite happy place (after our back yard and the woods) was Quail Ridge Books in North Hills. It’s a magnificent space, upstairs and down, that since 1984 has offered fascinating selections of best-sellers, local works, and more obscure titles. Over the

Storytelling

Stories are vehicles for witnessing truth, for creating histories, revealing secrets and solving mysteries. People in my family have always been storytellers, but not always reliable ones. (Is this narrator reliable? Is this my truth, his truth, wishful thinking, or somewhere on the edge of plausibility?) And the stories tended to be only pretty ones.

From the Bear’s Point of View

On our neighborhood blog, someone posted a picture of her SUV, after a black bear spent an hour or three working on the passenger side door to find what might food have been left inside. The newly redesigned vehicle sported a ripped-out gasket along the door frame, a bent sideview mirror, and several scrapes and

The Bull Pen

I don’t remember the bull’s name, but I know he liked red clover. He was huge, thick through the neck and shoulders. The bull lived in a pen that was built “horse high and bull strong,” enclosed by heavy oak planks bolted to posts of re-purposed railroad ties, creosoted to a thick sheen and sunk