Diary: Atlas Shrugged and how Bob Youngblood taught me to appreciate Charles Dickens

At best, I tend to regard Ayn Rand as a sociopath, and yet I’ve read her ball-boiling pot-buster (and seemingly interminable) novel Atlas Shrugged. Why...

Daphne Phelps and “A House in Sicily”

The struggle to learn the language was wearing, when study necessarily took place after long days of dealing with endless kind visitors who felt...

My year in books and reading, 2023

Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete hardbound set of the Compton’s Encyclopedia; furthermore, they subscribed to the annual...

Take me, I’m existentially yours (or, crisis—what crisis?)

This essay appeared as an "On the Avenues" column on January 1, 2019. For those reading from afar, be aware that in metro Louisville,...

My year in books, 2022

Just before I was born in 1960, my parents purchased a complete set of hardbound Compton's Encyclopedia and subscribed to the annual yearbook supplements....

Does New Albany even have an intellectual history?

Originally written and published at NA Confidential on October 30, 2014. ON THE AVENUES: Does New Albany even have an intellectual history? The last time I...

Menu Items: “Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants”

Originally published at the Food & Dining Magazine web site on 13 September 2020. --- Nothing could be more common than the salt and pepper on...

Roger’s year in books and reading, 2021

When it comes to books, I’ve never seriously attempted to rank a year’s reading in terms of "best of" or the like. To be...

Books: “Bowling for Communism” in Leipzig

 Leipzig was among the East German cities to be visited in 1989 during my August working holiday in the GDR, but the group excursion...

Books and politics, with Roberto Bolaño and “The Savage Detectives”

In the year 2015 I ran for mayor of New Albany. During a candidate Q & A, I became the first mayoral candidate in...

Latest article

February update: 40 Years in Beer, Baylors in the Balkans, and a forthcoming book...

Regular readers know that my "day job" is at Food & Dining Magazine, where responsibilities have expanded over the years from writing a quarterly...

40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 73: All 42 pages of the 1999...

Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 72: Mitch Steele attends a F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting (1998). I cannot recall the specific impetus for creating the...

40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 72: Mitch Steele attends a F.O.S.S.I.L.S. meeting...

Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 71: A-B, Molotov cocktails, Mitch Steele and me (G.A.B.F., 1997 & 1998). On November 8, 1998, something...