Whether you wish for a low vantage point that gets you up close and personal with your surroundings, suggests a sense of quiet seclusion, or whether you desire a high vantage point that opens onto vistas that typically privilege soaring birds, Augusta offers many places to take in the view. Allow me to introduce you… Continue reading Taking in the View in Augusta, GA
Author: Ryan Lutz
Finding Augusta’s Best Soup
I recently went on a mission to find the best soup in town. An ambitious claim, to be sure–for a food critic perhaps. Fortunately I am no such thing (no offense, food critics). I am a simple gastrophile, and so the needles on my gastronomic compass turn on more subjective criteria. I did know, however,… Continue reading Finding Augusta’s Best Soup
Getting Close to Encounter (unabridged)
I was perhaps fourteen-years-old and, if not confident that I could reach the hawk’s nest, desirous to get as close as possible to it, even though it crowned the top of a colossal pine tree. To get to it, I would have to cross an abandoned, overgrown horse pasture behind our back yard, to the… Continue reading Getting Close to Encounter (unabridged)
The Greatest Hoodwink
As spectacle, The Greatest Showman is excellent, despite being a picturesque allegory (so to speak) of Hollywood’s most cherished dogma—the fantasy that the human will is sovereign. The sweep and color, the interplay of symmetry and asymmetry, the music and song, the symphony of movement and sentiment—well, it’s enough to take one’s breath away, and… Continue reading The Greatest Hoodwink
The Christmas Exchange
In the sixth grade, I received the most ridiculous and slightly insulting Christmas gift. My teacher decided to allow the class to have a gift exchange, determined by drawing names. I don’t remember whose name I drew, but I could hardly be expected to remember it: memory of the gift I received eclipses other important… Continue reading The Christmas Exchange
To: Mitchell Burgess (Writer & Producer)
Almost to the day, I wrote the following letter three years ago, out of sheer pleasure. It’s not a normal activity of mine to write letters to producers or writers or directors of television shows or movies; in fact, I recall writing only one other, to J J Abrams for making Super 8. That movie… Continue reading To: Mitchell Burgess (Writer & Producer)
“Not Yet!”: An Easter Meditation
We cannot control time, of course. Mysteriously, though, we do seem capable of … (grasping for a good metaphor) … convincing it to take a different route, or eluding it for a short while. One of my favorite poems emphatically declares “Love’s not Time’s fool.” I first read that poem as a junior in high… Continue reading “Not Yet!”: An Easter Meditation
What Was I Thinking?
It had been only a few weeks. Still, a couple of key clues indicated that our relationship had reached either its pinnacle, in which case it had nowhere else to go but down, or else its nadir, in which case it was time to pronounce Last Rites. You can be the judge. One clue, for… Continue reading What Was I Thinking?
Consider the Gap
Graduates ought to consider whether they are prepared to go to university. If not, they should take some time to get ready before going.