"No matter how cynical I get, I can’t keep up.” — Lily Tomlin
My experience with new year’s resolutions has been generally unsatisfactory. With me … and with almost everyone I know … resolutions are prescriptions for self-induced stress, ultimate failure, and consequent depression. They suck. That’s not to say I haven’t made deals with myself and stuck to them: I successfully quit smoking years ago and more […]
You Can’t Read That! is a periodic post featuring news about banned and challenged books. “What is the criteria for banning a book? Who gets to make that decision? Is it one person’s opinion? Everyone sees things differently; where will it stop?” Ignoring district procedures for making decisions about restricting student access to books, school superintendent […]
“It’s not me but the world that’s deranged. At some point in time, the world I knew either vanished or withdrew, and another world came to take its place. Like the switching of a track. In other words, my mind, here and now, belongs to the world that was, but the world itself has already […]
2011 went out with a bang; 2012 came in with a boeuf … Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon. And if you think that sounds tortured, you should have seen me in the kitchen trying to make sense of the recipe! Three Christmases back I gave Donna a copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French […]
The year, that would be. Out with a bang. Shot right through the brain. This Christmas we added a compact 9mm pistol to our arsenal, so Polly and I took it and its big brother (a .357 revolver) to an indoor range this morning. I wanted to get the feel of the new pistol, and […]
This is the time of year when print, television, radio, and online journalists take a break from the serious business of passing on corporate and government propaganda in order to put together “Best of 2011” lists. I thought about making a list of my best blog posts for 2011, but who am I to say […]
Remember me telling you about the tangled history of Maxie, our newly-adopted dachshund? We’ve been worried that Lauren, Lorrie’s daughter … and Maxie’s most recent owner … might want her puppy back some day, and no wonder … the dog is absolutely loveable, and who wouldn’t want her back? So yesterday we went to Christmas […]
The outside lights are up, strung along the eaves on the front of our house. Polly and I put them up two weeks ago. But the tree? That’s a different story. Our old Martha Stewart Omniliving Holiday Tree® has become a Ghost of Christmas Past: threadbare (yes, artificial trees shed too), one entire section of […]