Family treasures and a shot at TV stardom
Antiques Roadshow, the PBS TV series that for 25 years has revealed the history and occasionally breathtaking value of collectibles was coming to Nashville, and I had tickets. From there to stardom seemed what Bertie Wooster would have called a stone-dead cert, if ever there was one.
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A holiday experiment yields a lesson in kindness
In return for sore feet, knuckles slammed in register drawers, and more of that sort of amusement, I had the privilege of watching, over and over again, one of the most powerful human emotions: generosity, and the genuine desire to give to others, not as a perfunctory requirement, but as an expression of love.
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A fan remembers 40 years of following John Prine
The first time I saw John Prine in concert, it was hard to know what to make of him. As a college student at the University of Kentucky in the late 1970s, a music fan since childhood, I was already a veteran of many concerts, spanning rock to folk to R&B to jazz to church music. But who had ever seen anything like this guy?
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Remembering the first days of the coronavirus crisis
Nothing illuminates the beauty of the average day quite so brilliantly as the fear that the average day has vanished indefinitely — maybe for always.
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An old friend is the best friend
It was the fall of 1970, and we were freshmen in high school, that tender, socially feverish age when your friendships are everything and time stands still around every relationship.
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