St. Patrick's Day at The Waynesville Inn

Waynesville, N.C. -- Happy St. Patrick's Day from The Waynesville Inn.

This charming valley, tucked into the mountains, is showing signs of spring, cute and quaint, growing green just in time for St. Paddy's Day.

Yes, I've had some green beer. Yes, I've also had some Guinness.

We are celebrating my birthday here at the Inn, which sports a spa, a golf course, a tavern and a three-star restaurant.

In the 1920s, the dairy farm that occupied the current property was sold to Jim Long, according to hotel literature. Donald Ross designed the golf course and the rest is history. It opened as Waynesville Country Club in 1926. Famous guests include Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Arnold Palmer, Billy Graham and President Richard Milhous Nixon.

We went downtown today. I ducked into that endangered species otherwise known as an independent bookstore, Blue Ridge Books. Bought a New York Times. Jenn bought me Stephen King's JFK novel, "11/22/63." She shopped at a store that has a moving sale. I bought a festive hat and a new pair of rose-colored glasses.

We came back to the country club and enjoyed some brews and a burger at The Tap Room. I had bought a Romeo y Julieta downtown and smoked it on the deck after lunch while finishing off my Guinness. We have reservations at the Cork and Cleaver at 6.

Sing a chorus of "Danny Boy," eat, drink and be merry today.

Life is good.

The Kingle Single

Dwight Garner has a great piece in The New York Times about one of the lesser-known pleasures of owning an Amazon Kindle -- the Kindle Single.

Dwight says it well:

"I recently sat down and read 15 of these boutique minibooks. Most are blah; a few are so subliterate they made my temples ache. But several — like John Hooper’s reportage on the Costa Concordia disaster, Jane Hirshfield on haiku and Jonathan Mahler on Joe Paterno — are so good they awaken you to the promise of what feels almost like a new genre: long enough for genuine complexity, short enough that you don’t need journalistic starches and fillers."

I've read a couple. My favorite up 'til now is Pete Hamill's treatise on illegal immigration. But, having read Garner's article, I'm going to download the JoePa piece tonight when I get home.

Yes, I still adore the brick-and-mortar bookstore. Yes, I still buy paper-bound books. (Although if I bring too many more home my wife is going to kill me.)

But, I love the Kindle. I love it so much I have two. (Thanks, Jenn!) I'm currently reading Thomas Mallon's "Watergate: A Novel" on my Kindle Fire. Trust me, you quickly forget you're reading an electronic device and the e-ink technology of the original Kindle is easy on the eyes and doesn't glare in the sun.

E-readers and the internet are most likely the future of my profession. Heck, we wouldn't be meeting like this were it not for that lovely modern-day cracker barrel known as the weblog (or blog, for short).

So, I said all that to say all this, as Jerry Reed once sang. If you have a Kindle, don't miss out on the Singles. Good stuff. Good stuff, indeed.

A rejuvenating Sunday, time to read and to reflect

Sunday was spent quietly, at home, reading, resting, reflecting.

Jenn is still exhausted. I am OK, rejuvenated from relaxation.

I made some coffee and watched "CBS Sunday Morning," slightly disappointed that Charles Osgood was on vacation. I miss his baritone and his bow tie.

Nice, nice segment on Hedy Lamarr and her inventiveness. Look it up, if you missed it.



Tracy Smith spent some time with supermodel Cindy Crawford. Don't tell anybody, but I have a bigger crush on the CBS correspondent.

I skimmed the Sentinel and tore into The Times, moved by a story from Syria and perked up by the politics. On the op-ed page was a nice salute to the retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe, a real Republican maverick (you betcha!).

I found a nice book review of Thomas Mallon's "Watergate: A Novel," which is now downloaded to my Kindle thanks to a few Amazon gift certificates. I can already tell I'm going to enjoy it better than the engaging but bizarre "Mrs. Nixon: A Novelist Imagines A Life."

It remains to be seen whether it can top Kitty Burns Florey's "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog," a loving ode to the lost art of diagramming sentences, which I could once do with ease and enjoyment at Brickey Elementary School and beyond. Do they even teach that anymore? I doubt it. (Quote of the book: "Use the right word, not its second cousin." -- Mark Twain)

Now, it's time to relax, time to seek slumber, time to get motivated for Monday morning.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend.

New York and back in 50 hours

New York and back in 50 hours. Fun. Fab. Fantastic.

Now, I'm going to crash.

Tell you about it this week.

Here's a summary.

Drive all night. 6:30 a.m. Breakfast at Junior's. Check-in at The Milford.

Two-hour sleep. Shatner. Music Box Theatre. Matinee.

Relax. Rest. Rejuvenated.

Restaurant Row. Ravioli at Lattanzi. Rockefeller Center. Snow. Skaters.

Knicks hat. Times Square. Rangers game at the Garden. Watched on TV.

To sleep. Perchance to dream.

Rise at 7. The New York Times; The Daily News.

Leave at 8. Wreck on the Turnpike. Ten minute wait.

Pennsylvania. Breakfast at Perkins.

Maryland. West Virginia. Virgina. Forever.

Tennessee. Louis'. Home.

Start spreadin' the snooze.

The New York Times and me

Yes, I am a newspaper junkie.

Makes sense, I guess, given my vocation, huh?

But I always have been one, long before I ever dreamed I'd herd words for a living.

I started reading the local papers (we had two dailies then, alas and alas, an era gone with the wind) when I was in elementary school. It was addictive, even then.

I can remember the first time -- this was several years later -- I got hold of The (Sunday) New York Times. Oh, my. Now this was a newspaper! You could read it all afternoon -- heck, all week -- if you wanted.

It was once fairly ubiquitous at Kroger on the newspaper rack. But along the way most of the grocery stores in these parts, including Kroger, either reduced the amount of copies for sale or didn't carry it at all. At one time, the Weigel's gas station on Maynardville Highway at Ledgerwood carried a grand total of one copy. I once got there at 6 a.m., just as the doors opened, to snag one.

Home delivery of the Times didn't even make it to Knoxville until a few years ago. And finally -- finally -- it has made it to my zip code. I signed up for the Sunday Times and felt like a kid at Christmas the first morning I saw it at the bottom of the driveway next to the News Sentinel.

Some of my favorite columnists -- William Safire comes to mind -- are long gone. Maureen Dowd used to infuriate me. Now I agree with her more often than not, or am at least amused.

The Gray Lady has taken some tough hits over the past decade. Jayson Blair and all of that. But it's still the best daily in the country by leaps and bounds. And, every time I read it, particularly the arts section's Broadway reviews, it never fails to put me in a New York state of mind. It makes me want to hop a plane and wake up in the AM at the Milford, run out for a quick bagel and coffee, and work my way back to the room with a city edition to spend the morning with an old friend.

By the way, if you missed "Page One," the excellent documentary film about the a year at the Times, go find it. It's a powerful argument as to why, even in this age of smartphones and super bloggers, the ol' newspaper is still as important as it ever was. Maybe it's even more important now that any idiot with a computer and a camera begins to dream delusions of grandeur....