If you know me well, you probably know that holidays are food rituals for me. Thanksgiving is turkey and stuffing and pie; Easter is bunny bread (bunny refers to the shape, not the ingredients); St. Patrick’s Day is corned beef; New Year’s Day is lentil soup. Then there’s the mother of all food rituals: Christmas. Continue reading
Photo by Boris Oblak (Own work) [GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Not all of one, just a bit. I shared it with my husband. Continue reading
Do you make New Year’s resolutions? I’ve never really gone in for them, though it’s possible I might have tried once or twice. To me there’s something almost superficial about pegging the promise of a life change on the occasion of a recurring holiday. It seems trivializing or insubstantial, maybe flighty. I don’t trust myself to commit to keep a promise that I’m making because it’s the time of year to make a promise.
But that’s me, and I wonder if other people have success with their resolutions. I do like the idea of “new year, new start.”
I’ve been reading Jeanette Winterson’s “Christmas Days,” a book of stories and essays and recipes that isn’t only about Christmas, and it has this to say about New Year’s resolutions: Continue reading
This is a thank-you Facebook story. It’s also a thank-you, real-life friend story.
Yes, it’s possible to be both.
I’ve been seeing ads in my Facebook feed for a couple of weeks for free shuttle-bus tours to and from the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed S.C. Johnson headquarters building in Racine, Wis., in conjunction with the Chicago Architecture Biennial. They intrigued me, and I had every intention of following through and signing up for a tour. But I didn’t.
Then I went to my book club meeting last weekend, and friend J mentioned that he had just taken this tour and really enjoyed it. I went home that night and made my reservation. Two days later, I was on a bus headed for Racine. Continue reading
Finally, Illinois has a state budget after more than two years without one. I, for one, am glad, even though it means my taxes will rise (gasp!) … because the truth is, they would have risen a whole lot more down the road if this state had continued to (attempt to) operate without one. Credit rating agencies were threatening to cut Illinois’ bond rating to junk status if no budget emerged by July (we’re still not assured that won’t happen anyway), and that would have caused the problem to spiral further out of control. Continue reading
Former FBI Director James Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee this week, and he and the president basically (actually?) called each other liars. But as Maureen Dowd put it in the New York Times, “the president is not in any immediate jeopardy of being indicted or impeached.” Up next, Attorney General Jeff Sessions has agreed to testify before the committee Tuesday.
There has been a lot of reporting and analysis of Comey’s testimony. The Boston Review has an insightful piece dissecting how the president’s supporters have started attacking Comey with words that portray him as a woman. It’s a sad commentary that feminizing someone in this country amounts to demonizing, denigrating and dismissing them, but it’s true. If you are interested in good government, good citizenship, and ferreting out truth, pay close attention to the language used in debating issues and discussing news. Don’t let yourself get distracted from the real issues by this sort of sleight of hand.