Last week I read Richard Nester’s collection of poems, Buffalo Laughter. In Floyd County, Virginia, where Richard and I grew up, there’s a hump-shaped peak known as Buffalo Mountain. Floyd County High School (FCHS), where we met, is home to the Fighting Buffaloes. A year ahead of me, Richard went from Buffalo to Cavalier, attending […]
When I arrived at the University of Virginia in 1968, I sometimes whispered to myself the names I saw memorialized on facades and statues. Surely those were great men, I thought. Soon I had a part-time job in a lab located in the Barringer wing of the University hospital. I gave little heed to the […]
Thursday morning, I’ll embark from the Raleigh, North Carolina, airport on a flight to New York City’s LaGuardia. There, Chris Kerr, my friend of 45 years, will meet me. We’re off to Somerset, New Jersey, for the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA) meeting, and then on to Providence, Rhode Island, for a gathering of […]