Category Archives: Weekly Column

Author’s Note: Robert St. John’s Mississippi Christmas hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago (click to purchase). It’s a collection of recipes and stories from the Christmases, the people, and the neighborhood that shaped me— and the ones still unfolding. The piece below didn’t make the final edit, not because it fell short, but becauseContinue reading “The Last Strand of Tinsel”

There are moments in life when you don’t realize you’re stepping into something bigger than yourself. Back in 2009, the folks running the Edwards Street Fellowship Center food pantry called to say they were out of food. Not low. Out. Anyone who’s spent time in a kitchen knows the clock starts ticking the second youContinue reading “Making Mississippi Extra Full This Christmas”

Thanksgiving shifts on you as life goes on. But the earliest memories stay put. Our family used to drive to Brooksville, a little town in east Mississippi where my grandfather grew up. Several of my great-uncles still lived there, and cousins wandered in from all directions. That drive from the Pine Belt toward Noxubee CountyContinue reading “The Heart of Thanksgiving”

There was a time, not long after our daughter was born, when it felt like the whole world could shrink down to a few hundred square feet and still be complete. Standing in that freshly furnished nursery, looking at our tiny newborn sleeping in her crib, I remember thinking that if we moved to aContinue reading “Time Well Spent”

Christmas has a way of showing up early at my house—usually while the pumpkins are still on the porch. We haven’t even made it to Thanksgiving yet, and here I am talking about Christmas. Maybe it’s because I’ll be flying home from working overseas the day before my newest book is released—or maybe it’s becauseContinue reading “A Mississippi Christmas, Early”

LONDON—It shouldn’t work, but it does. Twenty-five Americans, most of them from the South, gathered around a breakfast table in Dublin. It’s the kind of setup that should feel like herding cats, yet, for some reason, it never feels like group travel. My wife and I don’t even like group tours. Though for nine yearsContinue reading “Where Are We Going Next?”

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” — Henry David Thoreau GALWAY, IRELAND— Not much in my life has ever gone according to plan, and that’s turned out to be the plan. The goal, at first, was simple: open one small restaurant, workContinue reading “How One Thing Became Everything”

PETROGNANO, TUSCANY — We were finishing dessert on the terrace last night when one of my Yonderlust Tours guests looked at the cap I wear most days and asked, “What’s that word mean?” Onward. People ask that all the time. He thought it might be a restaurant I owned or someone else’s business I wasContinue reading “Onward Part III”

At six years old, I wanted to be Darrin Stephens from Bewitched. He worked in advertising, came up with ideas, pitched them, and got paid for it. That seemed like magic. Somewhere around my preteen years, I decided being in a rock ’n’ roll band was the ticket. For a while it was architecture, thenContinue reading “So, I Guess This Is It”