"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Spring is here. You wouldn’t know it in the Northeast, but it’s lovely in the Southwest, and with our recent rain the Sonora Desert will soon be in bloom. In most parts of the country, students are out on spring break. In Tucson they’re out for the annual rodeo. For some, spring cleaning includes scrubbing up […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic column featuring banned book reviews and news roundups. YCRT! News The N-word strikes again: Harper Lee and Mark Twain pulled from Minnesota classrooms. Does this mean Duluth students will be left to read lesser literature? In Missouri, “… a significant uptick in efforts to outlaw books following the 2016 […]
A friend sent a link to a New York Times Magazine article titled “Does Recovery Kill Great Writing?” Alas, I’ve used up my free clicks for the month and can’t read it; I include the link here in case you still have some and want to read it. If I had to guess, I’d say […]
Donna tells me the household budget is tight, so I’ve been staying home. As long as I avoid Amazon, it’s the best way to not spend money. Yesterday, though, I decided to get out on the scooter and do some window shopping. I wanted to see the redesigned 2018 Goldwing, so I rode to a […]
The other night Jimmy Kimmel described Meryl Streep as an actor, and everyone carried on as if it was some kind of big whoop moment. But why should it have been? Every year I ask myself why we still call woman actors actresses, when feminine labels have vanished from other professions. When’s the last time anyone talked […]
From a New York Times op-ed titled “I Wanted to Be a Good Mom. So I Got a Gun“: A few months after my father left our family home for good, my mother heard me screaming in the middle of the night. It was the kind of scream that made her grab her rifle in […]
“One thing was certain: Rose had been wrong about the world becoming small again. Or at least it would not be the same small world it had been. Too much had changed. And amid those shifts and realignments, Anna had slipped through a crack and escaped.” — Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach Manhattan Beach by Jennifer […]
Who’d a thunk late-stage capitalism would bring on a new Dark Age by restricting access to information to those who can afford to pay for it?