By SEAN DIETRICH Morning. The lobby of my hotel is crowded. It’s breakfast time. This is the moment of day when guests emerge from rooms with messed-up hair, bedroom slippers and wrinkled clothes. They shuffle through corridors toward Bunn coffee machines like the...

The hotel parking lot. Early afternoon. He was packing his truck. Slamming toolbox lids. Reorganizing luggage in the rear cab. Iowa plates. I’ve never met anyone from Iowa before. Or if I have, chances are they were so timid I don’t remember them. Midwesterners, in my...

By SEAN DIETRICH I met an old friend for lunch today at a neighborhood deli. The portions were generous. The food was good. Our sandwich and burger came with complimentary pickles the size of commercial pontoons. We found a table in the corner. We ate. We laughed. We...

By SEAN DIETRICH Mobile, Alabama. Morning time. I was meeting someone important. I pulled into the parking lot of Toomey’s Beads & Bulk Mardi Gras Supply on Macrae Avenue. Which is the kind of store you will not find in any city but Mobile. Toomey’s is a...