Author Archives: John Swinburn

While searching online for a recipe for carne guisada this morning, I came across one on a “mommy-loves-to-cook-and-write-about-the-challenges-of-motherhood” blog. I scrolled past paragraph after paragraph and photo after photo before I finally came to the recipe. It seemed a little … Continue reading →

My niece called me this afternoon while my wife and I were eating an early dinner. We had stopped at the Bubba’s Catfish-2-Go food truck for fried shrimp, fried okra, and fries (a fry-fest, I guess). Just as I was biting … Continue reading →

I just watched an episode on CNN of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown that brought tears to my eyes. Seriously, it presented a city (indeed, a region) in which I spent eight unhappy years in an entirely different light. The city … Continue reading →

I wonder whether, given the opportunity in my thirties or forties or fifties, I would have moved to Mumbai? When I was an undergraduate in Austin in the mid 1970s, a friend and I talked about going to India. Our … Continue reading →

I read a question posed on Quora recently, asking whether something might be “wrong” with a person who others generally don’t like. A respondent then described a young woman who’s intelligent, witty, socially aware, confident, and physically attractive but who … Continue reading →

I sit in my study (the term is more appealing than “the guest bedroom”) staring out the window at the rain and fog. We’ve had days and days of very heavy rains. All the lakes are full and streams overflowing … Continue reading →

Yesterday’s fierce rains, still continuing but to a much lesser extent, have filled lakes, reservoirs, and roadways. The police and sheriff’s departments have issued warning about inundated roadways and impassable streets. Some water crossing roads may conceal wash-outs. The bottom … Continue reading →

This will be repetitious if you’ve been around here for awhile. It’s even getting tiresome to me, and I’m the one thinking and writing it. I embarrass myself when I cannot conceal tears that reveal my inability to rein in … Continue reading →

For years, I’ve attached a name to the kitchen my wife and I share: French Kangaroo.  One of my nephews created the image to the left at my request; I use it on a Facebook page of the same name, … Continue reading →

I just sent a long email, and a text message, to a friend I’ve not seen in a long time. As we grow older and our friends morph into the diaspora of the aged, I wonder whether it’s safe to … Continue reading →

Last night, I heard heavy rain slam against the composition shingles above my head. I wished I were a child again, the sort of child who would go outside to experience that cold anger of the winter sky. But I’m … Continue reading →

I dabble in reality the way other people I know dabble in fiction. Those other people write an occasional piece of fiction but they spend the majority of their writing time solidly entrenched in the real world. I, on the … Continue reading →

Some days…or weeks or months…I’m ashamed to claim that I am a blogger. I miss posting for days or weeks. And then, when I do, my posts are so random that I cannot in good conscience suggest to a living … Continue reading →

Last night’s World Tour of Wines stopped off in Auckland, New Zealand, with a couple of side trips to Christchurch and Wellington. We sampled wines from only a few of New Zealand’s seven hundred wineries; I suppose the only way … Continue reading →

Where would the world be in the absence of glass and screen? How would we let light enter our homes in the absence of glass? Would we live closed off from the world, choosing darkness over exposure to weather and … Continue reading →

You look around you and you see people who could have been friends but are not. They don’t reject you, they simply don’t embrace you. They are not bad, they do not wish you ill, it’s only that you do … Continue reading →

I resent Facebook. Facebook extracted depth from communication, replacing meaning with volume. Depth now splashes in shallow Facebook pools, trying in vain to find its way to the life-sustaining oxygen of conversation. Conversation that died at Facebook’s hand.  Conversation withered … Continue reading →