My blog has migrated to a new host and is being painstakingly reconstructed here. Please bear with me as I iron out wrinkles, hammer out the dents, and apply enough spit and duct tape to hold it all together.— Karen
In a year as awash with bad luck as 2020, it’s tempting to wonder whether the fault lies in our stars; after all, Mercury was in retrograde in early March, which could hardly be a coincidence. Or is it divine retribution — the Biblical End Times we’ve heard so much about? Could the madness be…
Who doesn’t love to roll their eyes over absurd conspiracy theories? I heard one this week that I’ll share, but only if you promise not to believe a word of it: they’re saying the wire that goes across the nose of your face mask is 5G (wireless technology that’s the subject of a boatload of…
Juggling six kids with a 17-year age range and non-stop personalities, my mom became an expert at deflecting disaster. One of her best tricks was simply redefining the situation to suit her purposes. Take the summer I was nine and her car kept breaking down, which in those pre-cellphone days meant long walks home or…
“I can’t believe I just did that,” a flustered stranger exclaimed to me, hurriedly pulling on a face mask in the supermarket. “I’ve been walking around this store for twenty-five minutes and forgot to put on my mask.” “Well,” I began. “Occasionally we all…” “And I’d just driven all the way home to fetch it,…
So this is it, I thought, I really have sunk to the bottom . Aloud I said, “So tell me more about your grandmother’s Spam recipe.” If you’ve never tasted Spam, it’s a cheap canned pork product using unpopular parts of the pig processed into salty lunchmeat. In WWII the US army fed it…
“I don’t believe in astrology; I’m a Sagittarius and we’re skeptical.” ― Arthur C. Clarke I’ve lost count of the times someone’s sent me “intelligent, you-should-read-this” coronavirus advice that turned out to be total hooey. Remember the (now debunked) Michigan doctor who told us all to wash our vegetables in bleach ? Did you…
It happened again a few days ago. I was on the sidewalk in our small California town when a family — parents, three kids, a sweet, goofy dog — began ambling towards me in a convivial cluster. Heartwarming, right? I reacted by leaping smartly into the street, heedless of oncoming traffic, to avoid their unmasked…
Of all the bonehead ideas floated in the 1950s — the curved-barrel machine gun for firing around corners, the vest-pocket ashtray, and bird diapers come to mind — the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab for children is a hot contender for top prize. Giving a kid a box of radioactive uranium ore to play with…
Rich loves swimming and normally does laps several times a week. Years ago in the locker room of his Cleveland gym, he noticed a man heading toward the pool — stark naked. “Excuse me,” Rich said politely. “There’s a rule you need to wear a suit in this pool.” The man shot him a “Well,…
When I was a college freshman, one of my roommates came home from a consciousness-raising seminar and announced that from now on she was eating nothing but purple foods. “They have the highest karmic level,” she explained. Some guru had convinced her beets, blueberries, and raspberry ice cream would keep her karma in tip top…
CELEBRATING GOOD NEIGHBORS These days I’m writing about Good Neighbors, exploring how the people around me are working to help each other get through these challenging times. My weekly posts appear on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on my travel and research schedule.
THIS BLOG IS A PROMOTION-FREE ZONE. As my regular readers know, I never get free or discounted goods or services for mentioning anything on this blog (or anywhere else). I only write about things I find interesting and/or useful.
