Overheard in a used bookstore near the University of Virginia this weekend: Family friend [addressing six-year-old child]: "So! Do you like books?"Father [to child, prompting]: "Remember what Thomas Jefferson said?"Six-year-old child [a bit hesitantly, as if reciting]: "I can’t live without a book."* Only in Charlottesville… * The child was paraphrasing a bit, but got […]
Displaying the most recent of 742 posts written by
Amanda
For once, a prose passage for the commonplace book. This is the beginning of Stuart Dybek’s wonderful short story "Pet Milk," in The Coast of Chicago (New York: Vintage, 1991): Today I’ve been drinking instant coffee and Pet milk, and watching it snow. It’s not that I enjoy the taste especially, but I like the […]
This post from Bitch. Ph.D. is making me rethink my decision not to have children: Saturday, we were running an errand and I was flipping around the radio and came upon a broadcast of the Met’s production of La Boheme. Pseudonymous kid: Wait! Stop. That music is beautiful.Me: Do you like it?Pseudonymous kid: Yes, let’s […]
I have an abiding fondness for the how-to format. (When I taught writing, my favorite assignment was always the "how to" essay; my students seemed to enjoy it as well.) Here are a few recent favorite links from others who appreciate a good process analysis: Lifehacker, a new blog about "the downloads, web sites, and […]
Tuesday was Elizabeth Bishop‘s birthday. Here are some thoughts, inspired by the list-meditation thing that LiL has been doing: 1. Chinese New Year also fell this week. It’s the Year of the Rooster, so I can’t resist mentioning Bishop’s poem "Roosters," which it took me multiple readings to realize is a war poem. (Then I […]
I’m back, at least for the time being. Things are still very far from all right, but the outlook is a little less dire than I initially feared. I’d still rather not talk about the situation; it’s in the category of "things that are too personal to share with the entire internet." I don’t want […]
I’m going to have to go on hiatus for a while. I’ve just gotten some very bad news (the ‘serious illness in the family’ kind of bad news), and I haven’t the heart to write much of anything right now. I’m not planning on leaving the blogosphere, and if the news in question is followed […]
I still read the Chronicle of Higher Education from time to time, and a few days ago there was an article about the loneliness of the single woman academic stuck in a tiny town where everyone in her social circle is married. The pseudonymous Sara Bradshaw (is that an homage to Sex and the City‘s […]
An editorial in the Toronto Star proposes a satirical solution to the SpongeBob SquarePants controversy: I have a proposal that I’m betting Dobson and the Focus on the Family organization would go along with. What’s needed are more cartoon characters willing to promote intolerance. Maybe, with the right kind of deprogramming, some of the existing […]
I’m sure that if I really lived there I would be kvetching about having to shovel and climb over snowdrifts, but still: I wish I lived in New York. I love Virginia’s mild and sunny climate, I really do, but — all we got here was a measly inch or two of snow. I feel […]