My car passed a beat-up VW bus with a JEFFERSON AIRPLANE LOVES YOU bumper sticker and the hippie at the wheel flashed me a peace sign. How had he recognized me as a fellow member of the tribe? By my car’s ban-the-bomb decal, probably, or my tent of long frizzy hair....
"Caught in a maelstrom of public reaction to its decision to cease funding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation announced Friday that it would reverse course." -- Washington Post You’re on your own now, pet In a surprising departure from past...
“Newt threatens to skip debates if crowds can’t cheer” -- headline “Gosh!” you’re probably thinking. “A new low in the history of American public figures! No one could possibly have been more childish and unprincipled than Newt Gingrich.” And I would agree with you,...
Once upon a time there lived a woodcutter who could no longer afford to feed his children. “Off you go,” he said, shoving them out the door. “Fine. Whatever,” said Hansel. “We were going to run away anyway if we didn’t get a Wii for Christmas.” He and his sister set...
I wasn't dreaming of a white Christmas in December 1987. In California we like to confine our snow to the ski slopes where it can make itself useful. What I wanted to do was host my family -- parents, sister, and Aunt Catherine -- in the Victorian cottage I’d bought...
Great works of literature can be discouraging for the novice writer. You labor for months to create something as enduring as Persuasion or Middlemarch, all the while suspecting that you’re not going to make it with your own book, Bread-Pudding Days. But even the...