I’ve known a couple of escape-artist ba

From beautiful Livingston Montana (they shot a lot of River Runs Through It here), I say come fish with us, ladies! Fly fishing is a terrific pastime, and days on the river are marvelous. We’d love to have you all come take over the scene at the Murray Bar from those boy-men dressed in matching outfits (or you can…

There’s a turn-of-the-20th-century china set for 24? designated for me in a closet on the farm my grandmother left to my Aunt in Illinois. And a set of crystal glassware. I do use my great-grandmother’s silver service, which I love, but oy, I guess I have to drive to Illinois? There’s a three day trip ...

I have COUSINS. There are the actual 1st cousins I grew up with like siblings — almost all boys, but I’m the oldest and my grandmother’s favorite so I RULED. I have 2nd and 3rd cousins who are COUSINS, whatever — we grew up together, and when there’s a funeral, we all get on the plane. Then I have cousins who aren’t…

I TOTALLY want spaghetti for all holidays. Especially for leftovers.

I do not love turkey because in those years right after my parents’ divorce, when dad was merely pretending to send the child support checks, we ate a LOT of turkey. Turkey was cheap, and my mother could cook one up and between leftovers, sandwiches, casseroles and finally, the dreaded turkey soup — feed my brother…

Oh honey — wait until they stop laying at about 3, and you have to decide whether to feed them as pets, or learn to butcher. I’m on my 3rd set of hens, and it never gets easier (although the chicken stock from elderly hens is pretty fabulous).

She was something all right. And now I have a real rich-lady ring to wear when I need to be intimidating.

Just after I turned 40, at a family wedding, my grandmother gave me a family ring. “Now you have a *really big* diamond,” she said. “And you didn’t have to marry anyone for it.” (She was also known for saying, at every engagement announcement “I just don’t understand why any of you girls get married now that you don’t…

Oh fuck off Joe. Really. I’m a total sucker for the smiley blue eyed winky “Uncle Joe” in the corner booth at the diner, but he’s full of horseshit here. I remember those hearings. I’d just started grad school and my mother was HORRIFIED that I sided with Anita Hill — we had a week or two of huge fights about it. Joe…

Colbert is also a serious Catholic, and if there’s a group of folks who have had to come to terms with sexual abuse out of figures of power, it’s the Catholics who stayed in the One True.

Another woman who for years was rumored to be “crazy” and “hard to work with” — perhaps the stress of having to show up at parties and work events with her rapist had something to do with it. Poor girl, and good for her for having the courage to come forward.

For almost 9 years now me and Mine have lived in the same town in separate houses. It works great. We were old when we got together and don’t have kids. I worked hard to buy my own house for my very own self and have no longing to give it up. We have dinner and sleep together, rotating between our houses, and then we…

Maxine Hong Kingston lost her house in the 1991 Oakland fires — and her book The Fifth Book of Peace — is a meditation on the contours of that loss. I saw her not long after, and she said that in her mind she kept walking across a room that no longer existed reaching for a book on bookshelves that were gone.

Four daughters. Just want to point out that this garbage man has FOUR daughters.

I just came back into academia as an adjunct after 20 years in corporate work. We have a union for NTT employees, and with a terminal degree, they’re paying me enough to make it worthwhile, plus health insurance. But my house and all my debts are paid off, and I have a freelance business as well. What upsets me are…

Nope, just gonna channel Hugh and his pipe, or El Dad and his 1970s cowboy-hat + pukka shell necklace look. (And he’s in his 80s now, so he’s just a vain old man who never accomplished anything. Easier to be kind than it was a few years back. Plus, weed.).

That cheesy photo, with caption, explains my dad leaving us in the 1970s (as my youngest brother was dying of cancer) so he could be a sports-car-driving dude who was “in love for the first time.” Said dad, now a geezer, is coming to visit on Monday, from Prague, where he moved in the early 1990s to “be Earnest…

Worst year of my life — the one I spent as a freshman at the U of I. Constant fear of rape (highest stats in the state in the early 80s, beating out Chicago and East St. Louis!), shitty frat boys, sociopathic sorority girls, marooned in the middle of fucking nowhere. Transferred ASAP.

I saw an amazing Nan Goldin exhibition at Salpêtrière back in 2004 — Soeurs, Saintes et Sibylles —about her sister, who committed suicide when Goldin was a teen. That it was at Salpêtrière was part of what made it so chilling.