January 2012
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“Then, it came to me, while I was reading Little House on the Prairie to my sweet...”
– heading toward simplicity: Guilt Be Gone
My sister Jen is quite simply the best mother I have ever known. As someone who has spent most of her baby making years in paralyzed doubt over whether having kids is right and how to have them without saddling all your worst tendencies and neuroses on to...
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“Children laughed and played nearby while men loaded bodies onto funeral pyres. ...”
– Monsterbeard: Varanasi - Part 1
I’m still fondling and hoarding my words from this city, not yet sure what I’m supposed to build with them. It still feels very dark and very light and totally unknowable.
I love when I read something that has me nodding like this did, nodding like a...
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“Speaking of Ben being close to people, he tells us he’s been in love four...”
– From Jane Marie’s brilliant Hairpin Bachelor reviews: Learning to Love Ben
So I may have given you the impression that I spend all of my time reading tragic books in a semi-dirty bathtub, organizing my candy collection and taking pictures of things I cook / climb on / find in our front yard....
Let's make a deal.
I’ll read Courtney Stodden tweets to him while he does the dishes. I don’t understand the lack of enthusiasm at this offer.
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My Memories of You Are Silent →
In that country there is a train
that stops when it gets tired It doesn’t bother
to read the signs There is a man in my car
who claims to be French
but does not understand me
when I ask quelle heure
est-il He shows me a picture of a man
and points to himself And the man
in the picture has a different
face For weeks I have been woken up
by dreams in which I open my...
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“I’m a very good dancer. I don’t have time for Dancing With the...”
– Martha Stewart
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“Dear Thom:
We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of...”
– John Steinbeck’s 1958 response to his eldest son’s proclamation of falling in love.
I have found about 15 solid and timely reminders in here and a great fat affection for the closing line.
via the Rumpus and Letters of Note
“Page eventually introduced Allan to Robert, and Allan worked to forge his own...”
– From the Washington Post story A Family Learns the True Meaning of the Vow “in Sickness and in Health”
Sitting at my desk, crying over this piece. In any marriage, I don’t know that you could hope for much more than this sort of honor and commitment.
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“When you have been loved, fiercely, and for years at a time, it is difficult to...”
– No Great Illusion: Unsettled
This, unintentionally I am sure, made me smile. It is wonderful and not at all as hopeless as it purports to be.
“It’s easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
– Frederick Douglass
(via good-morning-fire-eater, thesearepeopleyouknow)
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McSweeny's: Ernest Hemingway, Yelper →
via darthcosper:
by Alex Buckey
Sun City Asian Bistro and Café
Category: Asian TWO STARS
I called Sam and asked him if he wanted to come to dinner but he said he had softball practice and I said that was a damned shame and hung up. When I got to Sun City Bea and Rob were at were at the bar, behind tattooed women and men with guitars. They were sitting in the shade and their beers...
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“We’re all in the same boat in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a...”
– GK Chesterton
Maybe forever, figuring out how to peel grace and forgiveness out of my grasp and hand it over to those too arrogant or cold or broken to ask for it will be my most stubborn challenge.
The best I can do is consider all messes cyclical and intertwined. To find balance and peace in the...
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“Our good fortune allowed us to feel a sadness that our parents didn’t have...”
– Finally back home tonight, we watched and really loved Beginners.
And if I occasionally thought that Mélanie Laurent was a bit too cloyingly adorable, too wide eyed, too precociously French, it was only a cover for my jealousy of her unfailing loveliness.
Every movie ought to leave you with a...
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“Two seasons later, it’s winter now and we snuggle up to the bar, lobbing...”
– HollyGoNightly
Learning to wholly appreciate without envy or self criticism ALL that this woman possesses - some of what overlaps with my own attributes and some of which feels wholly, intimidatingly Latin to me — has been one of this year’s greatest joys. Holly is the sort of person I...
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December 2011
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“I never viewed money as being “my money” I always saw it as...”
– Louis C.K. on splitting four ways the $1 million proceeds from the online sale of his Beacon Theater show: Paying for production costs, rewarding his staff with bonuses, keeping $220,000 for himself and his fam and giving the remaining $280,000 to nonprofits (including the awesome charity: water).
...
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“My dad loved Christmas Vacation more than most people. By that I mean he loved...”
– a bright wall in a dark room.: National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989)
I’ve got a special place in my heart for this essay.
Merry Christmas from me and the Griswolds, everybody.