I think that just proves that the crazy can pop up anywhere...

I think you're fine, unless it's really hot out. If memory serves, in warmer weather she traded the fairisle for a French-cut T-shirt with a drawing of the "Hang in, There" kitty on it; you might want to think about getting one of those.

Our very-early-'80s high-school gang of nerds and misfits had one member (an especially dowdy type in fairisle sweater, beige canvas jeans, Keds, and bottletop glasses) who was a romance addict. We all went off to college and she wasn't much in contact, but the next summer we all agreed to meet to hang out (i.e. get…

I had one grandmother on each side of that fence. One had just been widowed as the Depression hit hardest and really went through hard times, and she was a good but resolutely plain cook who never, ever threw anything edible away. Her stockpot was a work of art. The other was definitely better off and had access to…

My first thought on seeing the still at the top was “how on earth did Sarah Palin score a Diane Sawyer interview?”

Exactly - where was this two months ago when I came home from open-heart with a four-times daily regimen of assorted pills? Now it’s manageable, but that first week even my primary caregiver (lucky me, my sister is a very able retired doctor) was frequently confused by the complexity of all the prescriptions...

Did your mom throw cranberries in a bowl with spinach particularly well?

Okay, here’s my manatee story: my parents retired to Florida in the early ‘80s. They were of modest means, but somehow my mother ended up in a very tony bridge club, and soon feared she was totally outclassed. The group met at each others’ houses and, as she discovered to her terror, always had lunch that featured a…

Okay experts/fans, here’s a Parks & Rec question: I watched the first two episodes of the first two seasons, and (forgive me) didn’t get into it. A friend who’s a big fan suggests completely skipping the first season and starting in with the second, saying that’s when it hit its groove. Thoughts?

This was my grandmother's story, but I think it holds up. She married a couple of years after the end of the First World War, to a sailor who'd been posted to the little Great Lakes City in which she'd given up her vaudeville career and was working as a book-keeper. His family arrives for the wedding, coming up from…

I think we’ll have to content ourselves, to the extent that’s possible, with the knowledge that he and his ilk are just a little bit more outliers than they might have been fifty years ago or so...

Think of that every time I hear the anthem, and giggle just a little bit inside.

Thank you. I sat for a moment over my coffee trying to figure out how she was 10 years younger than I am, when I was dead sure I hadn’t been reading those books (well, for the for the first time at least) whie I was in college.

Now they have no choice: not only do they absolutely have to go for "Burger-King," they have to name their firstborn "Clytemnestra." Especially if it's a boy.

I am really excited for the gifs of these things glitching out. Should be a riot.

Blasphemer!

Her finest hour...

Haven't done acid, but this reminds me pretty much exactly what a too-generous dose of mushrooms was like. I knew everybody in the world and loved them all and had a long conversation with Judy Garland and the colors and the flying and...

I'm thinking a lot about this kind of stuff now, for several reasons. I've just survived my first serious health scare (yay, open heart surgery), and so I've been home for six weeks or so without much to do but look at all the junk. I've got some great stuff, but the sad truth is none of the next generation of my…

The double-whammy of the Depression and the War really did a number on people my parents' age (born in'24). They were married in the summer of '45, and my mother's dress was made of parachute material trimmed with lace from her grandmother's parlor curtains. She had some shoe coupons but wasn't going to waste them…