MM Visits, Just In Time! Kristen’s been sick all week with a rotten cold, which combined with the fact she’s halfway through the third trimester of her pregnancy, has totally wiped her out. Luckily (for us anyway) this coincided with week her mom Sheila (MM – mom’s mom to the grandkids) had planned to come […]

Merles of Wisdom Went to Writer’s Day an SNHU yesterday. Hope Jordan and I are guest editing the next edition of Ex Libris while the Writers Project finds a new editor, and I’d assigned myself to go listen to Merle Drowne give his talk on “Character Driven Fiction” and write about it. Merle’s a good […]

Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School This from the “Design Observer: writings about design & culture” blog, a top ten list that applies not just to design but all creative jobs. The first one? Talent is about one-third of the success equation. The second (which maybe should have been […]

Sometimes Online Actually Makes More Sense Than Print I love the feel of a book in my hands, and the printed page is never going to be replaced, for me anyway, by a computer screen. But sometimes the digital version just makes a lot more sense. I’ve been playing with the online version of the […]

Ana and Chris Visit We visited Ed and Wendy and their kids, then James was out last weekend, and last night Ana and her beau Chris came out to dinner and we had a splendid time. It’s funny, though this has been a devilishly busy spring, we’ve been lucky enough to connect more than usual […]

Encyclopedias Obsolete? Man, they look so good on the shelf, but is anyone taking them down anymore? We have a set; the family set. My mom was going to get rid of them when she moved to Florida and I couldn’t bear to see them yard-saled so I took them. And they do look good […]

Objections to The Passion: Is It As It Was? The dean of the school of theology at Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University in Rome addresses some of the criticism that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is rife with historical and theological errors. We saw the movie a few weeks ago and came away moved: […]

Gray’s Dead; That’s Not Right Well, they finally found Spalding Gray’s body, two months after he disappeared from his Manhattan apartment, leaving behind a wife and kids. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine how a such a brilliant guy with so much success, a family and the whole dream, could want to kill himself. Other times […]

Now That’s Latin For the Homunculus! Looking for a memorable Latin phrase with which to practice the future perfect tense? How about: Nisi mecum concubueris, phobistae vicerint. “If you won’t sleep with me, the terrorists will have won.” X-Treme Latin: Unleash Your Inner Gladiator, by Henry Beard, has got it, and then some.

James Pays A Visit My (big) little brother James paid us a visit this weekend – he looks terrific, lost a lot of weight after having his jaw wired shut for two months (long story). I couldn’t get over how good it is to talk to him; I wish we lived closer, or that he […]