Back in the day, the legend goes, James Harrod, founder of Harrodsburg, Kentucky, home of the Beaumont Inn, created the stack cake to serve as a stand-in for the expensive wedding cake for the brides in the Appalachian Mountains. Friends and neighbors would bring in cake layers to donate to the bride’s family, and the [...]
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The trouble with this toy is not its fragility; nor in its impracticality, even given the fact that it will be played with little boy hands that squeeze too hard, and get things, naturally, dirty. The problem with this toy is what it steals from me in quality time. What it gives us in tears [...]
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Sandwiched between long hours of sleep deprivation and the hopelessness that came when I realized there wasn’t a thing I could do to stop my baby from crying, I longed, for the first time in my life, to smoke a cigarette. The hacking cough that would have accompanied the puffs eluded me, because I never [...]
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“I’m ready for the training wheels to come off my bike.” “OK. But remember, once they’re off you’ll need to learn to ride your bike all over again.” “Who’s Oliver?”
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Friday morning. My feet had not even hit the floor, and they were already screaming. “What in the world could possibly be wrong ALREADY”?!,” my voice bellowed down the stairs. “They’re eating ice cream for breakfast,” said the older brother. My feet hit the floor. I marched down the stairs, ready to do major clean [...]
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While the stocks plummet, as we read the details about our close brushes with terror, and as we sit cold and wet from this bipolar spring weather, we need a reminder of grander times; when romance pulsed like a fever; when elegance and luxury enticed the fingertips and the taste buds; when Americans were not [...]
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After dinner, I stood at my kitchen sink, looked west to the backyard to see the sun shinning and the rain pouring down. Water was streaming down in straight sheets, dancing in the glittering sunlight. Next, I turned my head to look to the front of the house, the spot where I’ve seen rainbows before, [...]
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These are the days when I grow the most; when the limits of my capabilities are stretched, and I find myself almost unrecognizable from the person I was this morning. Sometimes, you are just asked to “Step it up,” and you do just that. At the same time, that gap between me and the Prima [...]
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