Tracy and Teddy and The Boston Globe
September 23, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Middle Ages, The Way We Live Now
A couple of weeks ago, I did something I haven’t done for ages and ages – sat down and read The Boston Globe from cover to cover.
It was a dark Saturday morning, pouring rain from the edge of some tropical depression or another (Bill? Dennis?) that was passing by. Ted Kennedy had already had...
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(A Few) Headlines from Hell
July 17, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
Today the Boston Globe reported that unemployment in Massachusetts
is as bad as it’s been since September of 1992.
Coincidentally, September of 1992 was when I was laid off from the last full-time job I had, as a reviews editor at Lotus Magazine.
T and I were on vacation in the Adirondaks...
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Travel Stunts from Days of Yore
June 09, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
Here’s a 50th State-appropriate tidbit ganked in its entirety from The Writer’s Almanac. I like the bit about women getting “worked up” at more than 20 mph.
It was on this day in 1909 that the first woman to drive across the United States, Alice Huyler Ramsey, left New York City for San...
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Swellville, You’re Killing Me
April 10, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
It’s irony week here in Swellville, which, ironically, coincides with Holy Week. Last year I went all penitent; this year, the you’re-gonna-be-sorry karma is coming to me. To wit:
1) There’s been a pretty much steady stream of teacher hate going around town since the beginning of the budget...
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John Updike, in 2 acts
February 22, 2009
Filed in: The Home Front, The Way We Live Now
Life’s a shabby subterfuge
And death is real, and dark, and huge.
Those are lines from one of the last poems from John Updike.
The man is cold in his grave—he died, in case you’ve been under a particularly large boulder, nearly a month ago now. But damnit, I have two Updike sitings to...