The other night Chris and I were watching Chinatown, and we both said “Hey!” when Jack Nicholson ripped an obituary out of the paper for a dead guy named Jasper Lamar Crabb. Because you just don’t see my old maiden name that often. Growing up a Crabb wasn’t easy. Kids made fun of my name, and I was [...]
Among bloggers, there’s a common, oft-bemoaned problem: “What should I write about, I’m out of ideas?!” Looking through a 100-year-old children’s book today, I realized that this problem pre-dates blogging. Even in the early 20th century, authors and editors wrung their hands when trying to wring new ideas out of thin air. How else to explain this [...]
Those of us whose first kid is poised on the edge of the nest, flapping wings and getting ready to fly away, are in a bit of a panic. I saw another mother-of-a-senior in the YMCA locker room recently. She stood there in her swimming suit, scuba mask on her head, and asked somewhat frantically “So how [...]
Last night Hugh & Malcolm came home from a weekend-long skiing trip with our church youth group. (Thank heavens for other people who will schlep our kids to the slopes, while we go out to dinner and a Pretenders concert with friends, then stay in the next night). Hugh rode back with a friend’s dad and a carful of other kids, [...]
Yesterday a national women’s magazine sent a team of three to get my photo for its April issue. They’re doing a story on moms who make money flogging crap arbitraging rare treasures on eBay. My story of buying this for $4 and flipping it for $2200 had captured the editor’s imagination, and I was one of three women selected [...]
On Tuesdays, everyone fights over who gets to go to the mailbox. Because the winner sees The New Yorker first, which means turning to the last page immediately. We’re not in this for Talk of the Town musings on violincello mute makers or the long-form articles on microbacilli. No, we love the cartoon caption contest, in which readers [...]
From the time Ian was born, Chris and I knew we needed to pick a guardian for him, in case, you know, the unspeakable happened. When Hugh and Malcolm came along, we still needed to pick a guardian. But now the job was three times harder, because whoever inherited our kids in the event of [...]
I try to remember that line, uttered by an English monarch during World War II to cheer up the poor bombarded Brits. Hence my choice for a slogan, in my socialist Obama-style poster. To make your own Obama poster starring you or a loved one, go here. Share and Enjoy:
Emily and I talked about starting a new feature once a week, in which we post about a story in the news. I know the real idea is to editorialize about a national news story, but I’m going to start with something sillier. As one of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, has pointed out, true insight into [...]
The year was 1980. I was living in Washington DC, working as an au paire for a family headed by a Democratic pollster, a Dungeness-crab-loving Jew raised in San Francisco. He was fascinated by the fact that his young live-in nanny, a junk-food-loving Baptist raised in Missouri, was a registered Republican, and I remember answering pollster-type questions [...]
