There are two things for which the area I’m from in Tennessee is universally known: Jack Daniel’s and Bonnaroo. However, just five miles down the road from my actual home is the man more revered in my house than Jack himself: George Dickel. And up until last week, I had never stepped foot on the [...]
Photo Friday: Auburn, Alabama
January 7, 2011 By 37 Comments
This Photo Friday is an attempt to sway the Universe. Universe, wouldn’t you LOVE to see an Auburn win on Monday? That’s what I thought. While I graduated from UT—the UT, as in University of Tennessee—I come from a divided SEC household. My sister, my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, and I all went to [...]
Creatures of Habit
December 27, 2010 By 36 Comments
We’ve had the same holiday routine since practically 1845. OK, maybe not quite that long, but close. I usually fly in around Dec. 15, mainly because a) I work from home and my computer is just as functional in Tennessee as it is in California and b) I want to avoid the bulk of holiday [...]
Photo Friday: Nashville, Tennessee
December 24, 2010 By 25 Comments
On Christmas Eve last year, SVV and I bopped around Nashville, tackling a few of the tourist attractions for my latest book and finally giving him a chance to check out some of our state’s most historic sites. But the place I was most excited to share was the Opryland Hotel. Growing up, Opryland was [...]
Sweet Home Alabama
November 3, 2010 By 26 Comments
This past weekend, we went to Alabama on what was the quickest weekend in the history of quick Alabama weekends. We woke up at 5am Friday to fly over a period of 10 hours and three connections and found ourselves in Birmingham come dinnertime. While the real reason we were there was for another glorious [...]
It’s Football Time in Tennessee!
September 6, 2010 By 13 Comments
When I decided to transfer schools just for my journalism classes—Sewanee was liberal arts and, thus, had no specific majors as such—and wound up at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, I hemmed and hawed and hemmed some more. Practically everyone I know from my hometown goes there (there were 30 alone from my graduating [...]
