I love living in a city that teems with cultural opportunities. This past week felt especially rich, and although I cannot wait, literally, to go to bed tonight, the fatigue is worth it.

On Wednesday, not two hours after traffic mayhem, swimming lessons, gobbling pizza, hopping the Metro and arriving in Chinatown, I made it to the historic Sixth & I synagogue where an energetic line stood waiting for the doors to open,

I took my seat, the closest to the dais I've ever had at Sixth & I, and took in the effervescent buzz of anticipation around me. Ta-Nehisi Coates was soon to take the stage.

Have you read any of Coates' work? He writes for The Atlantic (The Case For Reparations was an incredibly journalistic accomplishment; The Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration is in the Oct 2015 issue), has been published in the New York Times and has written two books. Between the World and Me is on the short list for the 2015 National Book Award, and Coates was just awarded a MacArthur Fellows grant.

Wednesday's talk was part of his book tour for Between the World and Me, his recently published letter to his son about the history and present of being black in America. Of blacks never having had full access to what Coates calls The Dream.

It is perfect houses with nice lawns. It is Memorial Day cookouts, block associations, and driveways. The Dream is treehouses and the Cub Scouts. The Dream smells like peppermint but tastes like strawberry shortcake. And for so long I have wanted to escape into the Dream, to fold my country over my head like a blanket. But this has never been an option because the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies.

The letter is, as he said in an interview, a literary construct, but Coates told us that he tried to be as unsparing in this book as he is when speaking with his son. Which is to say, brutally candid about his perspectives and confusion and fears, for blacks, America and his boy.

He feels that in doing so, real trust is built, and I agree. He has a presence and authority that comes from mincing no words and buttressing his arguments with research and facts.

Coates grew up in Baltimore. Looking back, after college at Howard University -which he credits as the watershed experience of his life- he believes it wasn't rage or violence that really explains all he saw and witnessed on his childhood streets. It was fear.

Not being violent enough could cost me my body. Being too violent could cost me my body. We could not get out. I was a capable boy, intelligent, well-liked, but powerfully afraid. And I felt, vaguely, wordlessly, that for a child to be marked off for such a life, to be forced to live in fear was a great injustice.

Coates' writing is so powerful. In print he often seems a hyper-intellectual firebrand. I love reading his work and admire him tremendously, but I wasn't sure what his in-real-life presence would be like. Would he seem prickly?

Not in the least. He is totally charming, affable, funny, warm, at ease and so very bright. I laughed, was brought to tears, and found myself repeatedly nodding my head in agreement or disbelief. It was an important night for me, and I enjoyed myself tremendously.

*******

Last night, T and I joined friends at Buck's Fishing and Camping (same place the Gabrielle Hamilton dinner was held; remember? I asked a three-part question!) for a dinner celebrating the release of Ruth Reichl's new cookbook/memoir, My Kitchen Year.

Long, long ago, I read two of Reichl's memoirs, Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples. I can hardly remember the details, but I remember feeling enveloped by her stories, her writing, the way she wrote about childhood, adulthood, food.

I thought she was a marvelous editor at Gourmet and loved her emphasis on publishing long-form food writing. Real, substantive, literary work. When Conde Nast suddenly and unceremoniously shuttered the magazine's doors in 2009, I was both surprised and deeply disappointed. At that time, Reichl was 62, and couldn't recall the last time she hadn't had a job. What was her identity without one?

She did what she'd always done when stressed or sad. She went to her kitchen and cooked. My Kitchen Year is the result. It's a simply presented book, 136 recipes dancing with stretches of Reichl's effortless prose. You feel you can make these recipes and do so successfully, and I believe that's Reichl's aim.

She wants people back in the kitchen because she knows what transpires when one cooks to nourish oneself and others. It's something along the lines of healing. At least it was for her.

Of course I asked a question, which was along the lines of the place and future of food memoir in a time that often prefers soundbites, and later got to sit by Ruth for a while. She was gracious and lovely and signed not only my copy of My Kitchen Year but also the old paperback copies of Tender at the Bone and Comfort Me With Apples I'd pulled from my 'favorites' shelf as I ran out the door.

Gabrielle Hamilton and passports have little to do with one another except that during the twenty-one hour span that commenced last night at 7 and ended today around 4, I saw and spoke to Gabrielle Hamilton, she signed my copy of her new cookbook and I realized that my passport expired in June yet I need it to leave the country on Monday. You can imagine that the latter is the lame duck in the "which one doesn't fit" game.

Sigh, it is always something. However, I feel immensely grateful that I a) realized this today rather than on Monday and b) live in Washington because c) was able to make an emergency expedite appointment for Monday at 10:30am. The process is said to take 3-4 hours from start to finish, so if you don't think I'll be biting my nails in the cab out to Dulles later that afternoon, you're wrong. Immense waves of relief will rush over me as soon as I successfully check my bag and get my boarding passes.

Y'all keep your fingers crossed for me!

Last night was so much fun. Tom and I went with friends to a local restaurant, Buck's Fishing and Camping, for a dinner celebrating the release of Gabrielle Hamilton's new cookbook, Prune. (The event was organized by Politics & Prose, a tremendous independent bookstore here in DC.) It's a compilation of recipes from her restaurant, and I love that it's basically a bunch of sauce-spattered notes bound in a magenta shell. It's the kind of book from which I think I'll learn a fair amount and I am excited to jump in.

Gabrielle looked just like she does in her pictures which sounds as if it should be obvious, but you know how some people in fact do NOT resemble their photos. That is just weird. Anyway, it was a lovely evening. The bubbly was flowing, the lights were dim, people seemed truly enthused to be there. Once we'd sat, Hamilton gave a brief discussion of the book and later took a few questions.

Mrs. Student here had been thinking about how much I wanted to talk to her. I had to let her know how seriously I enjoyed her memoir (Blood, Bones & Butter), wanted to ask about a particular element of it and also thought I might throw in the fact that not two weeks ago, we ate at Prune.

Because I don't eat lamb and didn't feel interested in the rabbit leg, I'd had less solid food than perhaps advisable in the presence of freely-flowing booze (each course was paired with a matched wine). Perhaps because of that or perhaps because I was just really enjoying myself, my hand shot up -SHOT UP- when she inquired if there were any questions. My tablemates, 90% of whom I didn't know from Adam, were wildly supportive of this. I found their waving arms and cheers of "She has a question! She has a question!" very sweet if not slightly odd. Maybe they'd had a few glasses too.

Gabrielle called on me, I stood up and smiled and proceeded to let her know that my question was actually a three-parter that included two comments and one query. Nerd.alert! Swear to g, someone said, "Only in DC" which, frankly, I took as a compliment.

I told her about our visit to Prune, praised her memoir as masterfully crafted and asked if its structure -particularly around the arc of experience with her mother-in-law- was premeditated or if she'd discovered it during the writing process. "Well, as I mentioned, I have an MFA and yes, this was planned very carefully. Every word was intentional." Even more impressive really.

One of her sons is named Leone, so after thanking her, I said, "Oh, and Part 3, I have a new nephew named Leone." A collective laugh swelled when I started in on point 3, but hey, I raised my hand quicker than lightning. Today it seems possible that my knowing the name of her son may have seen vaguely stalker-like, but alas.

On our way out, I stopped by to thank her again and she was so warm and wonderful and thanked me for my question. In fact, look how she signed my book:

I floated home!

Tonight, when there was nothing more I could do about my expired passport, I started making a beef stew. It was cold today, and stew just sounded perfect. Comforting. Hearty. Midway through I decided to make potatoes to go alongside. I boiled these until al dente, sliced and fried them until golden and then topped them with rosemary, salt, pepper and a generous dollop of crème fraîche. Divine.