Susan R. Matthews' Jurisdiction series (which seems popular with readers in the Armed Forces too).

Alera? Hard to mess up a Family In Danger series.

The Garden State has amazing produce. Jersey tomatoes really are the best. Such rich, lush farmland.

I'm not surprised that Atlanta didn't make the map. 2/3 of Georgia's population is in Atlanta, yes, but 2/3 of Georgia's GDP is in...agriculture. Which is not dense. The other cities that made the map are large centers for Finance and/or Energy sectors. I've lived in those places; it's hard to explain the…

Yesterday someone was filming a rap video at 23rd & Jackson. We still got it goin' on. Or something.

Susan R. Matthew's Jurisdiction series. Brutal morality tale, yummy characters.

Is that where you combine Grumpy Cat with Scumbag Brain and get Scumbag Cat (who only says NO). Or is it The Scumbag Knights Who Say No (but look like cats)?

Sure, sure, everyone needs basic life skills. But if you're going to include it as part of a standard citizen's curriculum, call it something interesting like Life Hacking. A dull name like Home Ec will be certain death to a new education movement.

I sense we're missing an opportunity. Rather than justifying why women change their appearance, we don't we tell men that they'd look better if they painted their faces? Can you imagine if every woman hollered back to catcallers 'Yeah baby, you'd look great too in a little makeup!" Just sayin' <ahem>

Novels and other media aside, one of the reasons that we don't know more is that people decided not to talk to their families about their war experiences (too grim and unimaginable to convey to non-combatants), that people decided not to talk about The Great Influenza that ended the war (also grim and filled with…

Indeed. When I last visited Mt. Vernon in the 1980's, a Russian speaking friend and I came upon some Russian tourists who were trying to decipher the informational sign on one of the 'slave quarters'. I will never forget the look of horror on the tourists' faces as they learned for the first time that the Washingtons…

You've seen The Oatmeal's take on this? Murder cats? http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cats_ac…

Umbridge is the incarnation of every banal female psychopath a person has ever suffered as an instructor, as a member of a homeowner association committee or as a boss. Whatever intellectual abilities she has are focused on securing patronage and carrying out petty vendettas (kiss up and kick down). She seems…

With all the Pink Washing, how can people be unaware that MOST OF THE TIME the nipples go during a mastectomy? Would you want to leave behind potential seeds for recurrence? Never mind that for breasts larger than a B Cup there's practically no chance that you'd be able to save the blood vessels and nerves that supply…

I've lived in the South, so I'll translate. It's Country Folks and City People. It only seems related to ethnicity (race? Give me a break, we Mericans are more mud-blooded than nearly any other country on the planet) since the over six million African Americans who migrated from the South to the North and West (1910…