Decorating the tree has always been my favorite Christmas tradition. When I was a kid, we always bought our tree a few days before Christmas, at Robinson’s Market up the street from our house on Claster Boulevard, then placed it in a bucket with some water until Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve Day, our parents brought …
If you follow these things like I do, you’ll know the Booker Prize shortlist was announced September 23, and one of the six nominees, Kiran Desai, previously won the prestigious award in 2006. I haven’t yet read any of this year’s titles, but I’ve read multiple reviews and so was not surprised by Desai’s inclusion, …
Dear Stephen Colbert: You don’t know me, but I’ve been a fan for almost twenty years, since The Colbert Report on Comedy Central, and Hubby and I have been faithful Late Show viewers since you took over as host (though, to be honest, I usually watch the recordings. 11:30 is way past my bedtime.) Often …
Late June, Hubby and I were preparing for our trip to Alaska and the Yukon, an adventure over one year in the making. He’d traveled to Alaska before, on a fishing trip with a buddy years ago, but I’d never been and was both excited about all we’d planned and anxious about being away from home …
(an original short story) Two days before the bicentennial and Madeline Harper’s tenth birthday, someone rowed an eighteen-foot Statue of Liberty constructed entirely of Venetian blinds and plywood across the rocky Susquehannock River and mounted it atop a crumbling stone railroad pier two hundred yards from shore. No one knows how it got there. Not …
Dear Graduating Class of 2020, I hope this letter finds you well. I hope this letter finds you. It’s been awhile, since we were all together. Friday, March 13, 2020, to be exact, the last day of our pre-pandemic world. That night, New Jersey’s governor closed our school for two weeks. Two weeks became five, …
(WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Jim Shepard’s “Privilege.”) In June 1972, the summer before my family and I moved from Philadelphia to Dauphin, Hurricane Agnes pummeled central Pennsylvania and flooded its Harrisburg capital, a scant seven miles from our soon to be constructed house. Even after we settled, its damage could be seen in …
I have adored Haruki Murakami for nearly twenty years, when one of my AP students introduced him to me as her favorite contemporary writer and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as her favorite book. Start there, she suggested. So I did, stopping at the bookstore on my way home from work because …
Drum roll, please! I won my 2024 Goodreads reading challenge. Sort of. I said I wanted to read 100 books. I read 104!! Barely. I read the last word of the last book at 8:26 PM December 30, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. Probably not the best end-of-challenge choice, considering the holiday crush …
(third in an occasional series on Media Literacy) During the Big Brother season 26 live finale, the two remaining contestants vying to win its ninety-day competition were reunited with their previously evicted housemates. Seven sat on a jury that would vote to select the $750,000 winner, while the other seven had been sent home following …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 