After WWI, President Hoover received a bronze statue of the Egyptian Goddess Isis from a group of Belgian schoolchildren, soldiers, and refugees. Whatever possessed them to pick Isis, I’m not sure. At the time, Isis was considered the Goddess of Life. The inscription at the base of the statue (not at the base of the […]
Bunch of e-mails circulating at work about “The Woman’s Rules” “The Man’s Rules”–even “The Chocolate Rules,” so I came up with my own version: The Little Old Lady Rules (The logic here is that I have a little box in my brain marked “inappropriate.” There’s a little old lady in that box. She says things
Lee and I used to live in West Branch, Iowa, birthplace of President Herbert Hoover. The town is also the home of Scattergood Friends School, a college-prep school run by the Iowa Yearly Meeting of Friends (Conservative) (that is, by Quakers). From 1938-1943 it was also run as a hostel for Jewish people and political
From ***Dave and Kate, a writing exercise. The weird thing about this one is–I hate it. What [sensory experience/concept] is [typically unrelated item]? Fill in the blanks for a cheap poem…this was the kind of thing they made us do in college instead of teaching us about, um, anything useful, and they bug me now.
I hit my first happy metaphor today. The main character has just come back from the Army Nurse Corp after WWII. She’s looking for a job: The next stop was the University’s General Hospital, spreading like a castle or an old English manor house across the frozen landscape. Steam rose from a pair of barely-visible
Or just one. My sister-in-law, Erica, won a hundred bucks for her last-minute costume. Oh, God. It’s worse than the guy with red-colored Fruit Loop boxes all over his shirt: the Cereal Killer.
I was bugging people at work asking them, “What does falute mean?” After about, oh, five hours, this was the result: Pronunciation: hai-fê-lut-ên * Hear it!Part of Speech: Adjective Meaning: (Regional slang) 1. Highly pompous, bombastic (speech). 2. Showing off, ostentatious, pretending to be above one’s station in life, putting on airs. Notes: The amazing
