From the Office and Backyard to the Road, Boat, or Plane–Backstories and
Side Stories While on Assignment. Updates on Personal Projects, Too.

03.23

2009

Snorkel, then supper

grill dinner

Along one of the coral dust and gravel lanes of a campground that’s just a few miles past the seven-mile bridge to the Lower Florida Keys, we pitched our tent. A few feet away was the site’s (number 57) wooden picnic table, and our neighbors’ RVs and “cabana” trailers surrounded us… their canopies strung with party lights shaped of globes, fish and alligators. The mid-March mornings and evenings were still sweater-cool at the Sunshine Key RV Resort & Marina, but in mid-day everyone looked for shade, water or air conditioning.

We were lucky enough to join fishing parties on two of the three long Florida days of our visit… riding out with Captain Bookie Burns in his 23-foot Aquasport. The first day’s trip was to the jostling Atlantic side for a couple hours over a 20-foot bottom where we reeled in mostly Lane Snapper and Yellow Tail while the boat bucked against its anchor and the chum bag made its long line for us to cast into. Besides the catch (which was slow at the start, but just enough to keep things interesting), the floating chum also attracted a steady school of silvery ballyhoo, and then at one point, a cruising 4-5 foot shark. Further out, a hefty sea turtle bobbed up and looked around. When our bait of shrimp ran out, we motored nearer to shore to drop anchor in a calm bay about four-feet deep. The captain wanted to do some snorkeling, see if he could back some spiny lobsters into his mesh sea bag. Soon we’d added a couple of the claw-lacking lobsters to the cooler, and back at the campground that night, Peter Frank sliced a tail for grilling, alongside a whole grunt, with lime.

Sunshine Key 2009

The second fishing day was on the calmer Gulf of Mexico over a grassy, 14-foot bottom where the Jack Crevalle, mackerel, Mangrove Snapper and Lane Snapper kept us busy. We were only at Sunshine four nights/three days, but we got in a Keys groove… after fishing we’d swim from the campground dock in a mud and sand-bottomed wash between the Gulf and the Atlantic. Then we’d shower in the cinder block bath houses and head back to our campsite or someone else’s for cocktails or beer, and plates of hors d’oeuvres… hard boiled eggs, peanuts, crab dip, cocktail weiners on toothpicks, spears of asparagus. And then in the breezy night with coconut trees leaning, we’d sleep well and long on the air mattress with all screens open in the tent… once after a particularly good round of picnic table dominoes.

 – Sandy Lang, March 2009

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Food, Travel, Wild animals and places

03.10

2009

Underwater Keys? I’m in.

along Route 1 between Miami and Lower Keys

We leave soon… won’t make it as far as Key West this time, like we did in winter 2007. Back then, for three nights in a row, I floated in a tile-edged pool of 90-degree water after dark – an old cistern – and looked up through palm trees at the stars. Twice, I was the only one in the pool. And the one night when two other couples were also there, I dunked under and still heard nothing but the sound of bubbles – not even a rooster crowing. It was magical.

One of Ole Papa Hemingway’s characters talked about Key West turning into “a beauty spot for tourists.” I agree that it was a certain destiny. What else could the warm island be – positioned as far to the South as it is – in a land of people who always want to go as far as they can?

This time we’ll camp near Bahia Honda Key, and I’m packing two or three bathing suits.

– Sandy Lang, March 2009

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Travel

03.05

2009

Charleston’s history, and mine

For a couple of sweet years, a few years ago, I lived in downtown Charleston on Archdale Street on the third floor of an over-sized single house, circa 1812. My kitchen door opened to a wide piazza, a courtyard below. From my attic bedroom, I was eye-level with two 19th century church steeples… one so close you could pitch a penny to it.

I walked everywhere. Or pedaled the Canondale bike I’d bought from a College of Charleston kid, and never did peel off any of his band stickers. For Attache Magazine (the then in-flight magazine for USAir), I wrote a batch of stories about Charleston, including a block-by-block tour of some of the sidewalks, alleys and cemetery gardens I would walk through the most. A few months ago, I was asked to dust off that walking tour article and revise it for the first issue of 2009 for G Magazine, with new images by Peter Frank Edwards.

Walking Tour, Charleston, page 1

I am still, as ever, enchanted by our city. Click below to see a PDF file of the six-page story.

Walking Tour, Charleston

– Sandy Lang, March 2009

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In print/published, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Travel

03.01

2009

Polaroid spring

Polaroid, camellia

I know it’s still officially winter, but the fading camellias next to the new azalea and pear tree blossoms brought out the bees in the backyard yesterday. Warblers are stopping in too, on their way to somewhere. I shot a few Polariods with an old box of film, a 1960s camera… tucked each shot under my arm to process, peeled back the paper to these images.

Polaroid, studio2

Through the trees is the tiny backyard studio where I often sit to read and write, listen to birdsong, blues.

– Sandy Lang, March 2009

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Home & garden, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston

02.23

2009

Knee deep in Maine

Sugarloaf, ME, February 23, 2009

I’m working this week in western Maine, and checking out ski towns. Last night the sky opened to a major drop of snow. While we drank a couple of beers at dinner at The Rack (Olympic snowboarder Seth Weston’s place), four or five inches fell across our car in a white fluff blanket. And by morning, there was more than two feet of new powder at Sugarloaf, where we’re staying for a couple of days.

After breakfast this morning I trudged up to the lifts in a whip of wind, and skied in snow so deep I couldn’t see my feet… it swooshed and shushed. It hushed, and the wind howled, brushing icy powder across my face, down the neck of my coat. A woman on the lift told me she’d lost one of her skis earlier in a three-foot drift, and most everyone was stopping to catch their breath on Tote Road, the longest run.

Sugarloaf, ME, February 23, 2009 - trees

It was a whiteout for much of the day, clearing just enough by afternoon to see the trails from the lift as you rode up. I’m attaching a few photographs, while still flush-cheeked in the apres ski. What an incredible day.

Sugarloaf, ME, February 23, 2009 - Tote Road

(The shots are mine this time, from my trusty pocket Canon.)

– Sandy Lang, February 2009

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Maine days, Travel

02.19

2009

Fat snowflakes, bacon and beer

Local 188, Portland, Maine

Last night we double-hopped dinner around Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. At Local 188, it was a round of Estrella and Unibroue with a long plate of spicy meatballs to share. We’d been to Local before, when it was in the shotgun space around the corner and you could drink $2 Schlitz tall-boys and watch the chef at the fiery cookstove, making that big bowl of paella you ordered. Now in a space 3-4 times the size on Congress Street (formerly a Goodwill shop), there’s still Schlitz on the menu, but also an open kitchen with several busy line cooks, an L-shaped bar, and just about every other manner of seating…. booths, tables, barstools, easy chairs, pews, and couches set around coffee tables. Everyone finds their place.

Fat wet snowflakes started while at Local, and we cut across Congress Street to Evangeline in a hurry, in the flurry.  It’s the one at 190 State Street with the outline of a pig in profile painted on the window… reminded me of the The Spotted Pig in New York. There, at the long bar we shared a litre bottle of Allagash Curieux (pricey but delicious Portland brew… aged in whiskey barrels).  And to eat, I had the best wilted spinach salad, with mini croutons, carmelized, balsamic red onion, and slivers of thick-cut bacon. Then on top, a perfect cloud of a poached egg… a delicious warm-up before walking back out into the white night.

Evangeline, Portland, Maine

Peter Frank Edwards has more images of Evangeline on his blog, including shots of Chef Erik Desjarlais cooking it up in the kitchen.

– Sandy Lang, February 2009

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Food, Maine days, Travel

02.17

2009

Spoonbread Savannah

On a rainy night with a tornado warning, you don’t want the winter storm come. But if it does, you want to see the drops pour on tall windows, Spanish moss tousling in the trees… and you, snug in a leather-backed banquette with some of the greatest possible comfort food in front of you, pan-seared quail on hot spoonbread.

It was a late dinner at the restaurant Local 11 Ten, in a renovated 1950s bank near Forsyth Park in Savannah. And the next day we went back and met the chef, Jeff Rodgers, one of those humble kitchen masters who simply loves to cook. We talked of Mississippi, his cooking influences from there… French, Creole, Southern. He grows fresh herbs on the kitchen patio, cooks with lots of root vegetables in winter. In his chef whites, he stood for a portrait in the restaurant’s mix of organic and sleek – dark woods and crème-painted brick walls. Then we went back to talk of the cooking life. Turns out, Chef Rogers is a big fan of comfort food, too.

Savannah stairs, Chef Jeff Rodgers

There were more bread comforts in Savannah. Out 20 or so blocks along Bull Street is Back in the Day Bakery, another good re-use of a corner building… this one with its taffy paint colors, cake stands and Formica tables, easy mid-century furnishings and feel. Early on a Saturday, I ordered a huge slab of the Bourbon bread pudding with my coffee, and then happily spent much of an hour watching the morning hum of customers come and go in the warm bakery… sugar glaze on my fingers, cinnamon scents in the air.

Back in the Day Bakery

The photographs are by Peter Frank Edwards. The image of the staircase is from our four-story wander through Alex Raskin Antiques on Bull Street.

– By Sandy Lang, February 2009

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Food, Travel

01.30

2009

Murrells Inlet, again

Murrells Inlet, Russell’s signs

Back in September I posted a preview of my food-travel feature about Murrells Inlet… it’s now in print, in the February issue of Charleston Magazine, earned a mention on the cover.  To read a version online, click here.

 – Sandy Lang, January 2009

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Food, In print/published, Lowcountry S.C./Charleston, Travel

01.25

2009

First of the new year

The January issue of Charleston Magazine includes my travel piece on Mississippi. It’s the magazine’s first-ever Literary Arts Issue, and my story opens with a visit to William Faulkner’s longtime home.

Walking up the allée of cedars on a chilly morning in Oxford, Mississippi, there’s the feeling that you’ve arrived at one of those heavy places, thick-aired with the stories and life that you imagine and know must have existed there… at least that’s the way it feels to a writer (to me, at that moment) who wonders about the effect of place on writing, or conversely, the effect that a writer can have on a specific place.

I’d come to Rowan Oak, the homestead and William Faulkner’s white-columned house where the Nobel and Pulitzer-winning author lived for 32 years, writing stories of the South in flux… complicated, powerful tales. There looked to be no one else about, and I pushed open the front door, Faulkner’s front door.  To the right was a small desk, and then a parlor to left that looked caught in a certain kind of mid-century South, with a piano and velvet chaises. I heard a man say.  “Are you the writer giving the reading tonight at Square Books?” I looked around. No, I wasn’t giving a reading, but it became clear that the man was speaking to me.  Obviously, I’d come to a place where the first assumption is that someone is a writer. (Pretty cool.)...

You can read the entire piece on the magazine’s re-vamped website. (The issue also includes winning entries from a fiction contest… plenty of fine writing in the magazine this month.)

– Sandy Lang, January 2009

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In print/published, Literary, Travel

01.06

2009

“Winter South” bookplates

bookplates2

I am captivated by this time of year… the marsh grass is golden in clear evening light, bare branches of pecan trees stretch into the sky, flocks of red-winged blackbirds swirl over farm fields. There are indelible scenes everywhere. It’s a stark, beautiful season.

For a few years now, photographer Peter Frank Edwards and I have regularly explored the South in cooler months on assignments, and along the way have developed a personal project, “Winter South.”  Using some of the images from this project, last month we had a series of bookplates printed to share with friends and colleagues. (They are adhesive-backed, pretty nice quality.)  If you’d like a bookplate or two, just let me know.

– Sandy Lang, January 2009

1 Comment

Art, Craft, In print/published, Literary

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