Yeah here’s something no one else is talking about. Which is of course the MAIN reason I bought 50 Shades of Grey. People kept saying they’d read it and then nodded their heads and going “mmmm HMMMM.” My friend said he went into Costco and a huddle of people were standing around the books reading it–…
Category: Life in America
More Mystery than Family
by
Louis Bonaventure Chanez and Margaret Salome Urban Chanez Agnes Schebler Hiegel and Alois Hiegel — While I was at my parents place for their 50th, I got a little melancholy about genealogy. I guess as we get older, it’s easier to see how our lives are like a filament in a lightbulb… Once we break…
Food Courage, No Judgment
by
This weekend, the kids and Colin and I went to New Jersey for the first time, (barring a visit to Newark airport) to visit a family of friends. It’s sort of rare to meet another family with more than two or three kids these days, so we immediately magnetized to Alma and Brian and their…
The Facebook Thing
by
At the end of Lent, I was over on Facebook, and my friend, Tammy, popped up on my Timeline and said in her status something like: Well, I’m back! Didja miss me?? I did it! A whole 40 days without Facebook! Then she posted a really great list of all the things she “got done”…
A Patriot in the Garden
by
You know all that flag-waving, “true-American” rhetoric we hear from the Rush Limbaugh conservatives? I was thinking about that today, as I was pondering getting our organic garden ready to spring planting. It’s Ok. I know I am preaching to the choir generally. But a good argument is worth saying, just in case it’s seeps…
The First Recipe
by
A BIG QUESTION Guest Post by Krista Richards Mann — I love cooking. Starting in grade school, my mother let me make dinner for the family once a week. The first recipe I remember learning was something she called salmon patties. We removed small vertebras from a can of salmon with our fingers, mixed the…
The Reporter’s Notebook
by
A Thank You to Brittany Lyte It’s been a curious couple days since I was featured on the front page of the Connecticut Post’s Business section about my Demand Poetry business. I’m not used to being on that side of the news, it’s true. I was interviewed by CT Post reporter Brittany Lyte, who was young…
My Friend, with Existential Chickens
by
I have a super great old friend from college, Jen. She’s a writer (here’s her book) and a journalist. And a mom. She lives in Des Moines and recently she acquired chickens. She and her husband and her kids have chickens in their backyard. Do you ever look at your friends, when they do something…
Paying for Santa
by
Number four child was TRYING to whisper in Jolly Old St. Nick’s ear at the Santa Village when she was interrupted. Elf: “WHICH PHOTO PACKAGE DID YOU BUY?!” the elf barked at us. Me: “We haven’t chosen one yet,” I said. “We wanted to get in line before it got too long.” Elf: “WHAT?! Well,…
How We Remember Alone
by
When I lived in Kansas City, I was single. This meant that I spent a great deal of my energy and mind space being frustrated and unhappy about my “alone”ness. Like most young women (and men too, I guess), I really wanted to find someone special to connect with, to be with, so long as…
Gone the Mailbox
by
At the post office, the hated post office, where lines greet me and awful racks of greeting cards Line walls, ignored. The post office and its Perfume of desperation. The place where scales and stamps sit in dusty corners Like aristocrats awaiting their bloody fate. The post office, doomed, because It is about PLACE and…
Between Here & Handmade
by
I want things handmade. I want a life devoid of BPA-worries. I want the holidays decorated in popcorn strings and toes of knee-high socks filled with sticky penny candy and tiny oranges. I want to have the hot cocoa, but not the packaging the dried chocolate-flavored granules come in. I want to make the gift…
If Only in My Dreams: A Big Question Series
by
December is the month of dreams, of nostalgia, of memories, expectations, hopes and disappointments. We were all little children once… dreaming our dreams of light and mystery, wide awake under our covers. It doesn’t matter whether those covers were cotton or silk. We are still those children. Some of us still imagine the twinkling light…
In My California Time
by
I heard: “Big Sur is calling to me” and here’s what happened to me. I immediately felt the grey, El Nino winter that that I spent in California, in 1999. I was working in a restaurant in Kansas City at the time a place that was renovating. All the staff was given 6 weeks vacation,…
The Girl Effect
by
When a girl turns 12 And lives in poverty Her future is out of her control. In the eyes of many, She is a Woman Now. Married by 14 Pregnant by 15 She may have to sell her body to support her family. What’s the solution? There are 50 million of them. girleffect.org Today bloggers…
