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“Mrs. Keunecke,” Nancy said. She wasn’t shouting. Anybody walking on the sidewalk might have overheard her, but there wasn’t anybody on the sidewalk, not in February before school let out. “Surely you’ve heard about me. I’ve lived in this town most of my life. People know me. I’m no lady, Mrs. Keunecke. I’m rough and […]

Grant Wood, of “American Gothic” fame, painted a picture of the Hoover cottage being shown off by a tour guide: The Brithplace of Herbert Hoover. It wouldn’t have been accurate, but I wish he’d painted Isis in the shadow of the trees off to the right. Rob Wood (no relation?) painted a bird’s-eye view of

Another Iron Road bit: Another fantasy. Whatever had taken out the rails had been quick, rough, and almost certainly loud. The railroad ties, which were old but good enough to reuse (there were fewer of them lying around, from what she could tell), had shattered and splintered, in some places even turning to sawdust. The

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