My mother was an instinctive cook. Words and directions did not hold much for her. She was a keen observer. She learned to cook from watching her aunts; her grandmother, Maw; her own mother. She loved recipes. Clipped them from the newspaper, kept them crammed in cookbooks and stuffed in bowls around the kitchen. She read them like fiction, intrigued by the possibilities they suggested, but hardly foolish enough to take them as literal instructions for real life.

1. Stand in the garden where you plucked it and eat it warm, out of your hand.
2. Stand over the sink and eat it, sliced, between two pieces of light bread held together with mayonnaise.

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By. 

The Kentucky I knew looked verdant and sun-dappled as my family drove through the palisades and then the gentle bluegrass on our way to the mountains from the city of Louisville. And even when we reached the mountains themselves, which so physically display the significance of shadow and mystery, I was still in a place that all the grownups around me treasured for its nurturing, its sustenance, its mothering. Even those who’d lived away for decades, in other states, in other countries, still called the mountains “home” because that was what they believed.

An installment in our weekly series, The By and By. 

I wrote once about a close friend of mine who celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas alone. She described the simple joy she had in preparing her special breakfast on those sacred days; the hours she spent poring over fat newspapers on the floor, savoring the decision of what movie to go to later; the ease of coming home to make a candlelight meal, with fine wine, alone.

Somewhere Else explores the cultural differences we encounter in Southern commons—democratic spaces such as rural convenience stores, gas stations, and produce stands.