"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Every year about this time Donna goes crazy over gingerbread houses. Old school gingerbread houses — Donna makes the dough, rolls it out in sheets, cuts forms for walls, doors, window shutters, roofs, and chimneys, puts them together with frosting, then invites kids over to help decorate them. When our own daughter Polly gets involved, […]
Dateline Seattle: we’re not banning books, just “suspending” them! Interesting USA Today article: it’s no longer just isolated parents working alone, now book banners and book banner wannabes are starting to organize and band together. The Smithsonian, taking its cue from Obama and the Democrats in congress, caves to threats of Republican miffitude. Even writing […]
Two days under the weather. Diarrhea, vomiting . . . yuck, who wants to hear about that? TMI! TMI! I only mention it because I’m so damn happy it’s over. At last, I can get back to stressing over more important things than the distance to the nearest bathroom. Things like Christmas. I sent out […]
“What has happened to you? How did you turn out this way? You know everything about me. I don’t know shit about you. Not a damn thing.” “That’s the way it is.” — Michael Nyqvist (as Mikael Blomkvist) and Noomi Rapace (as Lisbeth Salander) in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Shutter Island (2010) I […]
The difficulty of getting at the truth of a story was increased today by Wonkette, an influential political blog, then multiplied by Fox News, a conservative propaganda outlet. Starting with the onion’s outer layer, here’s the headline and blurb from Wonkette: An American state has decided to promote illiteracy? What, are they shutting down schools? […]
Our friend Darrell makes the most wonderful cards. I’ll never forget the one he made for our daughter Polly on her birthday a couple of years ago — it was a small shoebox, and when Polly lifted the lid off there was suspended from it a mobile made of small objects and photos of Polly […]
A zippier title for this post would be State Secrets & Shit Lists, but I’ll refrain. The way the authoritarians in our midst are calling for Julian Assange’s assassination, I can’t help thinking of Orwell’s 1984, where the citizens of Oceania turned to their viewscreens once a day for the Two Minutes Hate directed against […]
On this day in 1965, Australia and New Zealand exchanged instruments of ratification for an agreement on a limited free trade area. In the USA, the top song on the popular music charts was The Supreme’s I Hear a Symphony. In Wiesbaden, Germany, two frightened 19-year-olds exchanged vows. Of the three events, the most momentous […]