Sleeping Around

As published in ASJA Magazine, the publication of the American Society of Journalists and Authors. A year and a half ago I sold my home and lived for 14 months as a nomad, housesitting all over the country to explore the question: If you can live anywhere, how do you choose? Along the way I…

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Destination Punta Cana

Punta Cana Story Image

Among the many inviting Caribbean resorts, here’s one that stands apart. The rock underfoot is calcified coral, the ferns prehistoric, barely changed from when this island was new some 40 million years ago. The air smells of salt and earth, the tranquility enhanced by the shoosh of palm fronds, the skitter of lizards, and the…

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Rooted in the Shore

Photography by Keith Lanpher

In Chatham’s vines, centuries of tradition come together. There is a minerality to these Eastern Shore wines, a hint of slate and granite and the shells of creatures tossed ashore by the long-ago meteor that cratered out the Chesapeake Bay and scrambled the soil. There is salinity – from the wind or the Bay or…

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Ain’t It Grand

Photography by KEITH LANPHER

Small restaurant. Big taste. So worth the wait. Steve Marsh holds an octopus by its head cavity and lowers its body into boiling water, blanching the legs to make them tender before he cuts them off and cooks them sous vide in olive oil. Later he’ll throw each on the grill for a quick char…

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If the Shoe Fits

photography by KEITH LANPHER

In its halcyon days, the Craddock-Terry Shoe Company’s Southland Factory Annex in downtown Lynchburg roared and rattled with enormous leather belts that turned axles that turned smaller leather belts that turned the spinning wheels of sewing machines. There were days those belts snapped loose and whipped like lashes around the heads of the workers, days of…

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