Why I Hate Facebook
There are many reasons to hate Facebook (and many reasons to like it, to be sure, but I’m not going to address them here. Incidentally, if you are reading this…
Author: Laura
The Psych Ward, Ten Years Out
A few days before Halloween in 1998 my mother hauled me out of the chair I’d been living in and into the car and into the hospital, where I signed…
Bangs and Whimpers
We all know, or know of, people who crash and burn, the mad ones, the ones whose candle burns at both ends, who end with a bang, who burn out…
Conventions and Discontents
I am, as I write this, on call as a home support volunteer for the Radical Reference people who are at the Republican National Convention. So far this has not…
Cognitive Dissonance
Elizabeth Wurtzel went to law school and has now penned a frightening op-ed for the Wall Street Journal . It’s good to be reminded that no life is over till…
Read All About It
It stays hot — even here, at 5797 feet — too late on summer nights for me to be able to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, which explains…
A Peach is Perfect for a Very Short Time
I am trying to regard it as one of the blessings of this summer that I have not yet had a bad peach. Given war, natural disasters, the collapse of…
Walking
Teen: You’re walking? Me: Yes. Teen: Where are you going? Me: Home. It’s four blocks from here. Teen: Wow, four blocks is a long way to walk in the rain.…
Some Kind of Help is the Kind of Help We All Could Do Without
I am still in Iowa; everything here is still unbelievably sad and horrifying. This is just an attempt to take my mind off all that for awhile. My father died…
Home
I’m writing this from a Java House in Iowa City, the one over on the west side of town that’s now part of this mini mall that, when I was…