musings travel

Head for the hills

I’m writing this from the top of a ridge near Soddy-Daisy, where I am seeking refuge for a few days in an apartment atop a family’s carport. (Say what you will about AirBnb, but it may have saved my sanity this weekend.) I’ve been in the shit lately, with the miscarriage and the pain stuff and the surgery, of course, but also with just normal life in a pandemic — the working remotely and the…

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holden the family travel

Oceans 6 (year-old)

About a month ago we took off to Panama City Beach for a week. I’d been wanting to make a beach trip with Holden for a few years now, and it finally seemed like the time to do it. My little waterbirth baby hasn’t spent much time near the ocean or any body of water, for that matter. As a baby and toddler, his dad wasn’t too keen on taking him to public pools. He…

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photography travel

Two days in the Delta

For Richard’s birthday, I thought it might be fun to drive down to Clarksdale to visit the famed Crossroads and visit the local museums and haunts known for their connection to blues history. The trip did not disappoint. Even though we went during the week and live music offerings were limited, in part because lots of places have limited operating hours early in the week, we still got to see and hear some good stuff,…

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travel

Climbing up the Minister’s Treehouse

About two hours east of Nashville, in Crossville, there’s a giant treehouse built by a minister who says God told him as long as he kept adding to the structure, he’d never run out of material. A few years ago the Fire Marshall ordered the structure to be closed to the public, as it did not meet fire codes. So now it sits abandoned. I’m a sucker for rural places with bizarre backstories (like the…

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travel work

Love that Louisville

I was lucky enough to get to go to the SND conference in Louisville last weekend. I’d never been to Louisville and never been to an SND conference. Twofer! The city seems cool — we stayed right downtown in the beautiful Galt House and walked pretty much everywhere — and the conference was inspiring. I came back full of hope and ideas and hopefully the right amount of added chutzpah to be a better designer…

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the family travel vacation

A month later, vacation photos

the family travel vacation

And just like that, it’s over

We’ve had a blast up here in the campiest little strip in the mountains. Tomorrow we will resume regular life. My mom really went out of her way to make sure we had a great time, even though she knows I have no money to spend on fun stuff. She’s a keeper. My kiddo — despite being bitten by the whiny bug while we were here — has been a trooper through sickness and schedule…

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people are strange travel

Monday, 9 p.m.

I am in the hotel bar at the Marriott in downtown Jackson, Miss. There’s some sort of convention in town. I can tell because the bar and lobby is full of cackling middle-aged women and their severe hairdos. There’s a sweating bottle of white zinfandel on the bar and I can hear good-natured ribbing and knee-slapping and there is no way these people would ever be drunk together were they not here for work. They’d…

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