Last weekend, there was a book festival in my town. It's a great event - lots and LOTS of authors, each at a smallish table with a big p...

Today would have been my mother's 81st birthday. Would have been. Since she's no longer here to celebrate with nine times nine can...

I am annoyed at my newspaper of record. I have been reading the New York Times since I was a child. I remember the ENORMOUS headline when N...

The other day I came across something on the intertubes that struck me, hard. It turns out to have been posted more than 10 years ago - on N...

1. Babysitter . One family paid me by check, $2 and $3 at a time. Another had The Story of O on the living room bookshelf. 2. Mail sorter...

Throwback Thursday to ... back when she was a toddler, or a month ago when we were at Target? When she was little, she always wanted to ri...

So we dropped the kid off at camp the other day. And every time I tell someone where she is and what she's doing, I find myself explaini...

Today, our marriage has reached the age of majority: twenty-one . Or it would be, if we lived in Mississippi. As we are in New York, we reac...

My mother loved to rip things out of the newspaper. She'd sit at the kitchen table, with a cup of coffee and a paper cutter , and go to ...

I think often of the street I grew up on. It was a lovely neighborhood with kids my age and older and younger, and interesting people up and...

My aunt came over for dinner recently, bringing with her a couple of photos of her with her three brothers (one of whom is my father), as we...

You know what? The internet is the best. The other day, my sister-in-law sent out a picture of a whale in San Francisco. I - for reasons one...

Once again , we are looking to hire someone at my place of employment. Once again, we roll our eyes at some of the letters and résumés. I am...

Dear Patti, On a whim, I picked up your book M Train at the library last week. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite a whim, because the book was o...

A friend saw that I'd been reading Georgette Heyer, and thought that I might like a set of mysteries set in Victorian England. So she se...

It used to be that I never wrote in books. Then I decided that if it was my book, it was okay to write in. But library books? They shouldn...

Every couple of years, I sit down and dump my blog to one of the printing services, so that if (when) the internet blows up, I have a copy. ...

I confess that I never go to the movies. Or maybe once a year - which is awfully close to never. It means that by the time the Oscars roll a...

Today's entertaining/appalling news story is that " The Parmesan Cheese You Sprinkle on Your Penne Could Be Wood ". Now, the...

Me, heathen atheist, I only set foot in churches for weddings, funerals, and sightseeing. Yesterday morning, though, found me in pew 12 on t...