Name:     RAYMOND, ROBERT            Initials:     R                                  &nbs… Read full post »

You can tell it's summer. Magazines are running their usual stories, the ones that have been sitting in drawers all year, waiting for the slow news season. 

You can also tell it's summer because once again, women have been proclaimed to be the superior sex, and headlines flacidly procla… Read full post »

Dear First Lady Obama, 

It's one of those post rainy-day nights: I've got my windows open, trying to lure in some of the cool air, and I'm listening to the water tearing through the gorge at breakneck speed. It's deceptive, that water. You can see the bottom--most of the time, it's… Read full post »

I feel awful. One of my favorite writers, Hell, several of my favorite writers, frequently toil away here in relative obscurity. They might get two or three comments.

I have nothing to complain about. I get plenty of attention. Deserved or undeserved, I seem to have some sort of following… Read full post »

 Increasingly, I'm trying to rely less on "quotation collections" and more on things I find on my own--sentences from articles I've read, etc. Today's first quotation comes from Frank Rich's column in today's NYT. 

Anyway, please keep sending me your favorites. 

Thanks!

Lorraine

 … Read full post »

Before she became the Girl From Nowhere--the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years--she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte. 

And thus begins Justin Cronin's THE PASSAGE, which, unless you've been sleep-blogging, you know is the i… Read full post »

Elisabeth, my closest friend, told me the other day that she had something to show me. Her face was bursting with the secret, whatever she was about to show me was seeping out the sides of her smile, the glow in her eyes. We grabbed her two dogs, put them up… Read full post »

As many of you know, I teach creative writing at a small college. Many of my students asked me for a list of books that I would recommend as "summer reading." Here is what I put together.

I know that college is stretching the boundary for "kids," but many of… Read full post »

 Inspired by a rash of rude responses to recent posts, my partner Rob has offered this handy template to copy and paste as you wish. 

Dear ____________:

Thanks so much for commenting on my post. I so enjoy yet another opportunity to respond to an OS contributor… Read full post »

 I'm sorry I missed posting quotations last Sunday. I was in DC, on vacation with my youngest daughter and my lover, and I was staying away from the computer. But, I did get to meet Joan H--which was fantastic. 

Anyway, here you go:

Times are tough, and some sympathy… Read full post »

I found the ad at  The Atlantic.

Being one of those humorless feminists, I was, at first, speechless. Now, I'm choleric. 

Where does one start? With women's naked breasts used to sell what? Chicken? the World Cup? South African culture? 

And then the assumption… Read full post »

12 people were shot dead in England yesterday by a taxi driver, who drove from town to town in the [county] of Cumbria, picking off those he saw as they went about their day-to-day lives.

In their white starched dresses
In their pitiful white dresses
On their foreheads and breasts… Read full post »

Where have my words gone?

I miss them. 

I miss the way they tasted, the way they swilled around inside my mouth, crunched between my teeth. 

Of late, the words have scattered like mice under the shadow of the red-tailed hawk. They are in the tall grass,… Read full post »

I cannot smell mothballs because it's so difficult to get their little legs apart.

Steve Martin

-----

The idea of intellectual fitness is not one that sits well with most Americans. For one thing, the word intellectual gets a bad rap. Many people see it as some sort… Read full post »

I heard this yesterday on the radio. As soon as I heard the story, I knew that I should blog about it. But the second thought that came into my head was, "and say what, exactly?" The same things I've said many, many times before?

The story is this:… Read full post »

I have been reading student papers all week. Most of them have been remarkably good, and I have to say, by giving them the opportunity to turn in rough drafts ahead of time, what I've received as final papers are the best set of essays I've ever graded. It's making the… Read full post »

This month's Atlantic brings us another piece of intellectual sophistry by the feminist contrarian Caitlin Flanagan. Ms. Flanagan considers herself a feminist, and while there is virtually nothing she and I agree upon, I have long argued that feminism is a multi-faceted set of beliefs, not some singl… Read full post »

So, through a series of bad decisions, including investing a lot of the state's money in Wall Street, you've managed to run the ship of state straight onto the shoals of bankruptcy.

You were supposed to have a new budget ready by April 1, but because you've never gotten a… Read full post »

My daughter, Saoirse, returned from India on Wednesday, and since then it feels as if nothing's wrong in my world. I'm so happy to have my world traveler back, and the lessons she's already started to teach me have been astounding. I have become her pupil, and I am humbled.… Read full post »

This is more of a query than a post.

Increasingly, the comments section of my posts are being taken over by spam. I have been diligent about deleting it, but in the past 24 hours, each time I have deleted a batch of comment spam, a new batch has replaced… Read full post »

My father has been a royal pain in the ass for the past several years. It has (mostly) not been his fault. He has been without medical insurance (he is self-employed) and both he and my mum have struggled to only go to the doctor when it's absolutely necessary.

Dad's 68,… Read full post »

I have come to enjoy going through my various quotation collections and picking some out for each Sunday. I wish I could say that they have a theme, or something that ties them together. Instead, I'll just say that each one strikes me as containing some nugget of wisdom and/or humor,… Read full post »

 Because I Say So: The Dangerous Appeal of Moral Authority by Nikki Stern. (Bascom Hill Books: 2010)

On September 12, 2001, Nikki Stern woke up to find that she was both a widow, and, by virtue of the fact that her husband, Jim Potorti, had died in the… Read full post »