&… Read full post »

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I was sorry when Will Someone Feed the Cat pulled the plug on her blog here at OS.  I thought she was an excellent writer, so I wasn’t surprised when she sent out a PM disclosing her true identity as a Canadian newspaper columnist.  A couple days ago, I finally/… Read full post »

               I didn’t have her skin.  I didn’t have her teeth.  I didn’t have her body.  And I certainly didn’t have her hair.  But for a couple years back in the late 1970s, I, along w… Read full post »

I like the idea of paying "rent" on my little patch of OS real estate, and I REALLY like the idea of keeping OS solvent.  I'm even starting to fantasize about specializing, maybe in fifty-something rants, in hopes of attracting the lucrative pharmaceutical market.  But I'm also thinking it… Read full post »

                                                  &… Read full post »

They say revenge is a dish best served cold.  Not necessarily, as it turns out.

                 Many of us dream of getting published, and my neighbor Spirit is no exception.  For more than two decades now, in her que/… Read full post »

 It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since my dad punched a clock for the last time, but he’s still got his tools, the ones he used for 37 years in the die room at a Chevy spring and bumper plant, though they don’t get much exercise anymore.  My parents/… Read full post »

I’ve just passed a most unpleasant morning at my dermatologist’s office, atoning for the si… Read full post »

     Hey everybody, i.e., all five of you who still may be monitoring this site for signs of life.  It's been awhile, I know.   Just keeping a lazy toe in the water here with some recent items gleaned from the Sheriff's Log of my community newspaper, which, in… Read full post »

Hey, anybody around here remember me?

Six weeks is a near-eternity in OS time, I know.  While I’ve been busy ignoring my old friends, it looks like a few thousand new members have signed on and I'm wondering if I’ll ever get back into the swim again.  Being/… Read full post »

 [Warning:  not my usual light fare.  Regular programming will resume shortly.]

 As a girl, I always loved… Read full post »

                     &n… Read full post »

     On this blockbuster day of advertising days, Superbowl Sunday, it seems like an appropriate time to consider the business of who’s footing the bill for our own fun and games here on Open Salon.

     Do you ever worry that one morning you’ll… Read full post »

                 &nb… Read full post »

     Eventually it had to happen.

     For years now, our neighbors’ septic tank has been living on borrowed time.  There is, after all, only so long a primitive rural plumbing system can go on accommodating people who, every four weeks or so, rou… Read full post »

Well, I just finished "Lea’s" four-part series on her adventures in Antarctica and it clinches my theory once and for all:

The OS blogger known to you as "Lea Lane" is in fact a reclusive 52-year-old man who lives with his mother in a dull tract house near Trenton, New Jersey. … Read full post »

Can a Christmas tree last until Inauguration Day?

YES, IT CAN! 

But most of all, thanks to… Read full post »

      I am not a person who enjoys doing laundry.  The truth is, I probably haven’t seen the bottom of a laundry basket since the first President Bush left office, sixteen-plus years and three major moves ago.  During the interim, I’ve migrated from city… Read full post »

Lately things in my women’s book group have been getting out of hand.  I think it all started when we made the switch from herbal tea to sauvignon blanc; a solitary vowel, after all, is the only thing standing between a literary “salon” and a literary “saloon.” Th… Read full post »

OP = Oh, phooey!

Okdk = okie-dokie

OF = Oh, fiddlesticks!

TS! = that’s swell!

Dgi = doggone it!

F! F! F! = can’t remember what I was going to say

RTB = running to bathroom

ODQMI = oops, didn’t quite make it… Read full post »

First, a favorite snippet from Philip Roth’s novella, Goodbye, Columbus, about an aimless young man from the Bronx and his ill-fated romance with a Jewish princess from Westchester County:

Neil:  How can I make you understand?  You want to know what my plans are for the… Read full post »

Season’s greetings, dear friends, from my little corner of cyberspace to yours.  If I’ve been neglecting your posts lately, please accept my sincere apologies.  Due to extenuating circumstances, my OS time has been severely limited these past few weeks.

Every year, right arou… Read full post »

Ah, to be in Iraqi journalist Muntadar al-Zaidi’s now-famous shoes for a day.

Imagine the satisfaction he must have felt, watching the expression on the face of our Commander-in-Chief turn from cockiness to bewilderment as first one shoe, and then the other, sailed by.  … Read full post »