Memory loves to go hunting in the dark.

"I am interested in knowing the secrets that connect human beings," writes David Shields in Reality Hunger, A Manifesto.  "At the very deepest level, all our secrets are the same."

Shields maintains that all the best stories are true.  But how we tell them is changing. He packs a lot of contemporary wisdom into his pint-sized essays.

"We all need to begin figuring out how to tell as story for the cell phone.  One thing I know: it’s not the same as telling a story for a full-length DVD."

Lipstick Red Cowboy Boots.

I've got a fondness--okay, a weakness--for cowboy boots. Red ones, at that.

Twenty years ago, I bought a used pair straight out of a window in a second hand store in Seattle's funky Capitol Hill neighborhood.

It was a Cinderella story: the boot fit, much to the snotty shopgirl's suprise. This would-be cowgirl then galloped back east with her prize, wearing and resoling the boots many times.

Now, I've got to break in my own fire engine red pair of Luchese: http://www.zappos.com/lucchese-n4525-5-4 for my trip to New Mexico.

Boots, not diamonds, are this girl's best friend.

A Pair of Obscure (Cool!) Words.

Just in time for weekend socializing, impress your pals with these two ten-dollar words:

Estivate: Summer hibernation
Muzzy: Blurry, fuzzy

I'm a Believer.

As a food critic, I usually scoff at gluten-free attempts at gastronomy, dismissing the results as insipid.

But Christy Nolton, managing chef at Westside's Yeah! Burger, has mastered gluten-free onion rings(!)  I swear they are better than the top-notch "regular" battered version:  crunchier, with a liberal dash of pepper.

I gobbled them down with the Southern dog--kosher beef slathered with pimento cheese, relish and chopped onions. 

Bliss on a bun.

As their tagline declares:  they are keepin' it real.  Real GOOD.

http://www.yeahburger.com/

True West. In the Deep South.

Five hours. 

That's how long my pal Dory and I spent at the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville yesterday.

Five, air-conditioned, aesthetically enriching hours enhanced by (employee) Robert Hyde's storytelling.  When you go, ask him where the phrase "read between the lines" came from.  Hint:  it involves the Civil War.

This privately funded, expertly curated museum--with the largest collection of Western art east of the Mississippi--rivals the world's finest. And it's located less than an hour north of Atlanta.

You'll be transported to the West--with a Southern drawl.

Visit:  http://boothmuseum.org/

Tender Writing from a Tough Chick.

As an angst-y teen, I read and re-read Patti Smith seminal Babel.

In her memoir Just Kids, she writes tenderly of her relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe during the late 1960s in NYC through his death in 1989.

Of a sketch he gifts her she says, "He gave it to me without hesitation and I understood that in this small space of time we had mutually surrendered our loneliness and replace it with trust."

http://www.amazon.com/Just-Kids-Patti-Smith/dp/006621131X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280843543&sr=8-1