Ah, the holidays – the times of year when your family gets together and tells embarrassing stories about you. Uncle Jim remembers when you wrecked the family car. Aunt Yulia remembers when you wet your pants in public. Uncle Timmy remembers […]
This Thanksgiving has gone off without hardly a hitch. It’s been a thing of beauty – all the traditions we follow each year have just been better this year than last: Thanksgiving dinner, Black Friday pancake breakfast, the gift exchange, the skeet […]
This year at the Walpole farm Thanksgiving was full of educational moments. We taught our cousin’s new fiancee how to shoot skeet. I showed jiu jitsu to my cousin and learned some wrestling moves in return. And my physical therapist uncle […]
Tonight my mother experienced her first Lyft rides, rode a motorized Lime scooter for the first time, and joined me in exploring Piedmont Park and the Atlanta Beltline. She’s visiting from out of town, and as her host I’m determined […]
We have lots of different kinds of relationships in life, from close family to extended family to close friends to acquaintances. But there’s another kind of relationship which is underrated: familiar strangers. Familiar strangers are those familiar faces you tend […]
Potluck dinners are one of the great inventions of humankind. So why not bring the potluck concept to more (or all) parts of life? People want to connect with each other, and they do it best when they’re helping each other. We […]
I recently attended one of the best birthday parties I can recall. What’s odd is how this party stood out to me at all. It had no bumping music, no fancy lights. No one was drunk or high or gorging on fine […]
I was driving through Atlanta yesterday when I noticed a family name I recognized decorating a highway sign. You see things like that in Atlanta and in many small towns (like my hometown of Charleston). A few founding families can […]
Acting in the world requires a tolerance for failure, which requires a tolerance for what for some people is the most difficult form of failure: disappointing or pissing other people off. You are going to burn social capital with other […]
Dear parents and older relatives, Please don’t ask us to help you with your phones/computers/tablets anymore. For years we’ve gotten a sense of ego gratification from being the tech experts at our family reunions, on our trips home to visit you, […]
1. Hometown radio stations This might be the first bit of home you pick up as you drive down the last stretch of interstate before home. The song choices, the DJs, even the ads are all reminders of days spent […]
Dear mothers of the world, You are complete badasses. It takes complete badassery to bring more human beings into the world. First, you have to put up with everyone patronizing you for your entire pregnancy, while you struggle to keep down the […]