"No handmade print is perfect. The errors usually add interest to the artwork and give it a lot of character."

I came late to writing about food. As I settled in, I read a lot of A.J. Liebling, who, in “Between Meals,” savaged Proust and his prissy madeleine. Liebling declared a preference for “small birds, stewed rabbit and stuffed tripe,” and mused that taking into account what Proust “wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world’s loss that he did not have a heartier appetite.”

I have two half-brothers who live on the East Coast, and when I was a kid, if they came home for the holidays, they would bring a Styrofoam cooler of oysters.

For an Italian, my father exhibited uncharacteristic restraint except for two occasions: any time he was watching football and whenever he cooked. Then, my father’s full emotional range would burst open like roasted garlic smashed under a knife to extract its pungent pulp.

Seed of magnetite tucked deep in the robin’s brain: built-in compass?Last night I dreamed a pear. The distinct flavor enraptured the sleeping mind. Pear. From the Latin pirum (plural, pira), source not known.

A little more than a decade ago, genealogists like me started to get the hang of nonfiction storytelling. This might not sound like a big deal, but it marked a significant change in the field: professional genealogy, after all, is dominated primarily by those of us who conduct research, provide clients with research reports and produce family tree charts.

In the personal essay—and autobiographical writing in general—truthful accounts and historical facts can be distorted in several ways.

Recently, I have been rethinking one of my basic positions regarding the essay. For years, I have been saying the essay is not a logical proof or legal brief: It does not have to persuade; what is important is to follow one’s thoughts, even if they lead to contradiction.

Recently, I got to poke fun at my boss in front of a crowd. I took some of his writing and pointed out how incredibly boring his prose was, how he went on and on, pontificating about a variety of subjects, offering ideas and theories in a way that totally went above the head of any reader who wasn’t already attuned to his way of thinking.

At Benito Juarez Market in Oaxaca, Mexico: Chiles. We find mountains of them fresh, molehills dried, cones of chile paste, mounds of mole—rojo, amarillo, negro, coloradito—heaped like papier-mâché volcanoes, the kind of lava you want to sauce your enchiladas with.