If you’re the superstitious type, thirteen is an ominous number. But we don’t need superstition to feel bad about what’s been going on in the world lately. For a few years not all that long ago, the threat of terrorism … Continue reading →
According to this article in Slate, some researchers have found that home-cooked meals aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. They’re not cheap, it’s hard to get the family together, and the wretched louts seem ungrateful for the effort: Beyond … Continue reading →
Today’s a holiday, and I decided to mostly take a break from writing about politics. You know what’s going on, anyway, right? So I want to provide a thread about something entirely different: one of the favorite dishes of my … Continue reading →
Every now and then I get an email or a comment asking me to explain whatever happened to my “a mind is a difficult thing to change” series. Why did I stop writing it in early 2008? And will I … Continue reading →
First let me make myself perfectly clear: I don’t care one way or the other about what Obama’s tan suit signified, the one that has been causing such a ruckus. On the scale of things I have to criticize Obama … Continue reading →
A while back I went to the Boston Ballet to see Balanchine’s “Serenade.” Oh, there were other ballets on the program, but I shelled out the money for one reason and one reason alone: Serenade. I’ve written briefly about the … Continue reading →
I’m a sucker for these “100 best” lists, even if I’ve never heard of the people doing the choosing. So I couldn’t resist this one, where I discovered I’d never even heard of most of the animated movies they’ve listed, … Continue reading →
I’m not sure what I think about the tablets vs. textbooks debate. But my guess is that tablets are the wave of the future, whatever I might think. The actual text of textbooks has already become pretty awful, banal and … Continue reading →
When I was a child I’d periodically become wildly enthusiastic about something I had read or some music I’d heard, and I’d run to show my parents. “Yes dear, that’s nice,” they’d say absent-mindedly, backing out of the room. I … Continue reading →
I grew up in an area of New York that wasn’t especially high-crime, and my dealings with police tended to be limited to traffic stops. And yet I feared them because they had the power and I did not. And … Continue reading →
The same thing that happened to home dining itself: it’s become increasingly rare. I speak as a person who was raised in a house with a wood-paneled dining room, a very small kitchen, and a teeny-tiny den that was the … Continue reading →
…is on the upswing. I’ve noticed it among the young. I’m a woman, but I’m not an upspeaker. That’s because I’m old. And very opinionated. Polite, but opinionated. And I don’t like upspeak, in men or women.
Continue reading →