I am now receiving "Town & Country" in the mail because, on a tip from a clever friend, I went to fatwallet.com, and told a few casual lies.  (I could be practicing entertainment law and making $150,000 a year). Based on my fictitiously rarified status, I became a… Read full post »

I am writing to you, "using my words," as I have been taught from time immemorial, to plead my son's case. So far, I have felt that our communications with you resembled some kind of game for which we were not given the rules. We are trying to get him through… Read full post »

Because he does, every time:

 

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He was one I knew least well, the pale, quiet one with a pretty girlfriend. I knew, because I had fed the house full of undergraduate boys more than once, that he didn't like vegetables; although he said he didn't tolerate lactose well, he loved my macaroni and cheese and requested… Read full post »

There is a restaurant near our house called "El Azteco," that has been in this town, in one incarnation or other, since I was in elementary school. Suffice it to say that I have not been in elementary school since Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Until I moved away… Read full post »

Two days ago, my favorite author died. He was not exactly plucked in the flower of youth, being 91 and all. He also hadn't published anything since shortly after my third birthday. Well, he didn't ever publish a whole lot of anything, at least not anything I could easily get my…

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[Note: this is the second part of "Andrew's Apartment" and can be read separately, but they work better together].

My roommate in East Hall was a "townie" who had graduated at the top of her class from Oberlin High School, headed to a prestigious womens' college on the East coast,… Read full post »

[Note: if you have landed here because you are searching the internet for pages actually related to "animals," "cells" or actual science, you have made a terrible mistake. Hit the "back" arrow, and Godspeed].

It started as such things often do, with a casual remark. As I made change for… Read full post »

Being pretty much a pacifist, I am horrified by my son's fixation on guns - Airsoft guns, which shoot plastic pellets, paintball guns, and virtual guns used to shoot aliens/enemies/glitches via Xbox. Not having fallen freshly from the turnip truck, I am aware of the mass of data showing that e…

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Looking for vegetarian cookbooks at the library, I had already grabbed a (ultimately disappointing) volume from the editors of "Vegetarian Times" when Rob joined me and pointed up to a volume called Simple Food for the Good Life by Helen Nearing. I had been hearing about Helen and Scott Nearing and… Read full post »

About a month ago, I wrote a post about the fact that the lead singer of the band "Kings of Leon" had been quoted as saying: "[t]hat woman in mom jeans who'd never let me date her daughter likes my music? That's f--king not cool." My post was a letter addressed…

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My favorite word in the whole world is "sprezzatura," Italian for "effortlessness or ease," "careless grace" or "nonchalance." In my life, it stands for the ability to do something difficult while making it look easy. This appearance of ease is totally destroyed by any intimation that wheels a…

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Last summer I traveled out of state with a group of 11-13 year olds. We were the "pilot" for a middle school program in faith-based social justice centered on the urban poor, although the organization has offered a "poverty simulation" program for high school students for several years.…

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 Long before I was a cooker, I was a reader and a writer. I was one of those kids who had to be told not to read at the dinner table, and I was writing "novels" on my red Olivetti Valentine typewriter in fourth grade. The… Read full post »

I was born in George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., the day that the Queen of the Gypsies died there. Around the same time that one member of the throng of gypsies assembled to sit vigil stole the expensive overcoat of my mother's obstetrician, another took my father aside…

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At the end of 1981, I discovered that I was not a musician. This was a complicated thing, because I was enrolled (at great expense) in a Conservatory of music nearly a thousand miles from home. It was difficult to separate the realization that I had no heart for musical… Read full post »

I was living in the middle of someone else's life. A sublet on Montgomery Street, stuffed with her large-scale Victorian furniture, abandoned clothes, books, spices and grocery lists on the refrigerator. Barely enough room, in the tiny bedroom closet, for my own clothes and shoes, a 3x3 square…

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Since two of my three "real" jobs involve spending a lot of time on the computer, I have experimented fairly extensively with social networking. I started thinking about what Facebook means to me because of a series  of articles in various media and posts on Facebook. … Read full post »

The first time we went to St. George Island, Sam was only two. Rob couldn't get away, and so I flew from Lansing to Tallahassee with the diaper bag, the purse, the umbrella stroller, and the Terrible Two-year-old who threw his sippy cup at the besuited businessman who had the misfortune…

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During the school year, there is always something on the parental radar that requires the purchase of, production of or contribution towards food. These requests may be as simple as cupcakes for a first grade Halloween party (although one must be mindful not to kill, or merely a… Read full post »

At 3:00AM Sunday morning, trapped in my office, sitting vigil like a solitary Peacekeeper cut off from my comrades, I heard boys calling girls on their cell phones. Girls I had known forever, girls whose mothers were my friends. "What are you doing?" I heard in a female voice, the encounter…

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As I may have mentioned a time or two, I fell in love with a different gay man every year of college.  My second year at Oberlin, I fell in love with Andrew. Tall and solid, with bright blue eyes, a heart for literature, and a speaking voice that mingled… Read full post »

His voice is changing. I didn't notice it until it really, honest-to-goodness was the Eve of His Thirteenth Birthday. First it seemed like cosmic synchronicity that on that night,  as he laughed, I heard a break into a lower timbre completely different from the charming giggle of the pas… Read full post »

 

 I recently encountered an article about something called "Gender Disappointment," a label for women who are so traumatized by failing to produce a child of the desired gender that they become deeply depressed, and go to great lengths to produce the "right" flavor on future attem… Read full post »

I used to ease my son into bedtime by lying with him in my bed, and "interviewing" him for a bit. I asked him about his day, his preferences, and pretty much anything that popped into my head. He liked being taken seriously, and I liked having a window into his… Read full post »