I am amazed that the record shows that Warren spoke nearly as much as Biden. Maybe (probably) it’s because I cringe every time Biden speaks, but it felt like he spoke WAY more.  She was so much more succinct!

Yeah, I am technically a registered tribal member. I am also a white, blue-eyed person who physically takes after other aspects of my heritage. I care about my native background, but I definitely hesitate to speak up on native iissue, because I have never experienced any of the downsides to being native. On the other…

I have a theory that you are expected to prove that you are an *exceptionally* inappropriate pick for the job before Trump nominates you. (Like, I can’t imagine how he could find a Trump-ier person than Betsy Devos to head up education, unless he nominated one of those libertarians who think public education should be…

He’s what I think of as a themepark-ride director. Rather than trying to tell a fully fleshed out story, he wants to design an elaborate visual pastiche, and then make the ride so fast and showy that you don't notice that the story was non-existent.  

I loathe both Pence AND Ivanka more than Trump. Trump is a revolting person, full stop, and I despise him.  But Pence and Ivanka are out there gift-wrapping Trump’s evil in a whisper-thin film of religious belief and bland Instagram positivity, respectively, and they both act like they’re supposed to get some kind of…

My two sun care tips: don’t go outside when your shadow is shorter than you are, and be extra careful with small children—the sun damage you get as a kid is supposedly supposed to do more cancer-causing harm than the same level of sun damage on an adult.

There’s a painting from the Hudson School (sorry, can’t remember the artist) that depicts a tiny native man just chillin’ on a ledge, jutting out about halfway up a massive, utterly sheer cliffside. The artist offers no suggestions as to how he got there, or how he might get down. I wouldn’t call it “naturalistic”,…

My husband and I are your age, and we bought our first house when we were 19, right before house prices started their pre-Great Recession climb. It was cheaper than paying rent, we were super young and clueless, and we just pranced out and bought a 1930s bungalow in the PNW.  Things worked out great for us—we refinance…

You can buy (or presumably just make) some very good Douglas fir tea, if you want a hot drink that really tastes like a tree smells.  

Yeah, I’ve always loved the fact that she’s so aware that she owes it to her charge to get them both out of there. Left to her own devices, she would have taken more risks, but she won’t endanger the kid just to avoid hurting her love interest’s feelings.

And this is why I love ‘Nine Coaches Waiting’ so much! The plot climax hinges upon the fact that the heroine cannot and will not trust her hope that her love interest isn’t involved in the “domestic wrongness” (in this case, the attempted murder of a child). She resolutely ditches him instead, saves herself and her…

Here’s my question for Rubio: My friend has bipolar disorder. He lost his right to own guns here in Washington State due to a couple of involuntary psych commitments. Sure, he goes years without a mental health flare-up, but it’s not safe for him to have a gun, and luckily we have some local laws that enforce that.…

I’ve done a lot of volunteer work, and you’d be surprised at how easy it is to not “look” poor. There are lots of services available—free clothing, food, even toiletries—that can address some of the daily, smaller-scale inconveniences of poverty.

I’ve tried with all of these Austen updates, and none of them have worked, in my opinion. You can be inspired by an Austen novel (I was really impressed by how the second Bridget Jones book borrowed from ‘Persuasion’, for example), but they’re not well-suited to straightforward updates with only minor twists. …

Ben Carson’s approach to “helping” people is just as callous and poorly thought out as the rest of this administration’s plans. My grandfather lived the type of life Carson is romanticizing: he was one of 12 children born to a pair of dirt-poor Czech peasants, but he studied his ass off and became a lawyer, and…

Yeah, I’m sorry this kid is upset about missing her graduation ceremony, and I hope her pregnancy and eventual parenthood goes well. (I was a fellow teenage parent. Not due to a lack of sex ed; I was just young and arrogant, convinced I was basically invulnerable.) But I feel a little bad for the school, too. It…

I wrote a really long college paper on film adaptations of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, but my thesis boiled down to this: Luhrmann’s movie, with its lurid colors and wild violence and nearly-hysterical emotions, is probably the most accurate depiction of Shakespeare’s idea of Italians.

This has been raised elsewhere, but I’ve been thinking about the cultural biases behind for days: Trump has had five kids with three different partners. Imagine if Hillary had done the same. Imagine if OBAMA had done the same! Either one of them would have been automatically disqualified from running for president,…

It was originally labeled and reviewed as a children’s book. It has since been repackaged in a new, much more adult-friendly style, but I think B&N was just following the suggested placement.

I worked there. I just quietly moved it to the adult section. (I don’t work there any more, but I’d STILL move it to the adult section, just as a public service.)