Weasel Words
Real Ingredients. I can’t even. What does that mean? Very specifically, it means nothing. It is meant to evoke authenticity: ingredients you are familiar with, so that you feel what… Read more Weasel Words →
Can You Wear the Bottoms of Your Trousers Rolled When You Don’t Wear Trousers?
This photo was taken when Emily, the household dog, was a spry young animal of four or five: she is vigilantly looking out on our street, watching for skateboarders or other dogs. Skateboarders are her particular abhorrence. These days Em doesn’t stand in the window surveilling. Her hearing is not so great, her eyesight’s iffy, and more than that, her knees are in bad shape. When she was about six she tore the right ACL and required surgery (and six weeks of tranquilizers so she would hold still and heal),… Read more Can You Wear the Bottoms of Your Trousers Rolled When You Don’t Wear Trousers? →
Communal Language: Movie Edition
I sometimes wonder if I’ve done a dreadful, dreadful thing in raising my children to love many of the movies that my husband and I love. My younger daughter famously… Read more Communal Language: Movie Edition →
Tilt!
Since my teens (possibly even before that, but the facts get lost in the gauze of time) I have occasionally fallen over. Often publicly. The first time I remember was… Read more Tilt! →
A Cautionary Tale or Two
When my older daughter was about three, we went to the park on a hot Spring afternoon. Usually I did not have her in a stroller, but because we were… Read more A Cautionary Tale or Two →
My Mother Went Out for Lemons
What is your earliest memory? Mine is from when I was somewhere between two and three years old. I’ve heard that it’s unusual to remember anything that early. So I’m unusual: when my mother was still alive I asked her if the following thing ever happened and (subject to the Rashomon effect of her recollection being different from mine) I can say that it did. As a small child my family lived in the top two floors (or more properly, the top floor and an attic) of a brownstone on… Read more My Mother Went Out for Lemons →
Black Thumb
My mother used to have a little sign by her bed that said “A garden can be fun…if you don’t have one.” I’ve never been sure if this meant she was anti-gardening (she was a killer weeder) or just anti-my father’s whole-hearted dive into gardening. I am feeling much in sympathy with Mom today. After spending a couple of hours proof-reading new Book View Cafe releases (watch the skies… in about a month) I decided I would go out and gather up the rotting lemons in the backyard. See, we… Read more Black Thumb →
Madeleine Robins 