Ode to Hush Puppies: From trailer park goodness to haute cuisine (Oxford Town)
The first couple broke apart, spittering into gritty remnants in hot grease. On the paper towel, they resembled sand-sprinkled fritters more than the round, deep-fried biscuit balls they wanted to be. My mother laughed at them, suggesting we hit up Catfish One. I cranked up the heat.
Inside a first-rate moonshine-drinking, hat-off-and-sweeping-the-floor, Mississippi blues party (The Knoxville News Sentinel)
Some people have already written an obituary for the blues and its food. But in Mississippi the scene lives up to its tall tale reputation. For the lucky tourist who stumbles across the real Mississippi, it’s pure bliss. The pig’s feet are rude and real, unencumbered by cultural homogenization. The bluesmen jam out as though you hadn’t intruded. No outsiders are in sight.
Katrina one year later: Strength of a little sister (The Sun Herald)
Monday night other girls in my residence hall cried because the Biloxi lighthouse stood tall or because the Bay bridge had collapsed.
I cried because Aspen was all I had left and she was in Columbus. I cried because, of all the other grieving Coasties, she was the only one who knew what I felt.
The South’s Best Potato Salad (Oxford Town)
If black eyed peas bring prosperity, tuna casserole is meant to solace grief, and oysters signal lust, what emotion is mixed into a bowl of potato salad?
Most people approach the stuff with caution. They’re not quite fans, but they don’t hate potato salad.
Katrina a lesson in roughing it (two-year anniversary, The Post and Courier)
I like to say my parents’ knack for primitive camping and outdoor adventuring saved them during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
It takes a certain kind of mind to tie the family sailboat to its trailer and several oak trees in the front yard rather than boarding up the windows or evacuating.
The Post and Courier (Charleston, S.C.)
Guardsman’s family keeps him close: Duty puts Summerville man half a world away.
Half a world away, S’ville family misses Guardsman
Sculptor recycles Grace steel, fashions into industrial art
WWII veteran visits Italian town, residents honor troops
More (Harry Potter release, engineering camp). Many of my stories did not get posted online at the P&C.
Unfortunately, more than three years’ worth of my work at The Daily Mississippian, my college newspaper, probably has been erased forever (unless I want to do some serious work at the UM library). So much for availability and transparency. So long, movie reviews, funny food columns, and more than 100 examples of solid reporting. So much for professors who said a Web link was just as solid as a clips portfolio. Here’s the (undated) explanation: Still waiting on theDMonline.com… (sic).
