I stole this from a woman named Ellen

I wish I’d written this: My children each year ask me the same question. After thinking about it, I decided I’d give them my real answer: What do I want for Chanukah? I want you. I want you to keep coming around, I want you to bring your friends around, I want you to ask …

Oh, where to start…

So we all took a break from the blog to celebrate Thanksgiving (or basically wander off and do Other Stuff), and now we’re back. While we were apart, a recount in Wisconsin was started, and the Clinton campaign will participate.. Fidel Castro died. So did Mrs. Brady. And Det. Harris (and thanks, Leftover, for the reminder). …

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yes, I know it’s not until Thursday, but I have family coming in and I intend to be very busy eating and discussing and cussing. I hope you have a similarly blessed holiday, and see you next Monday.

On the unbearable lightness

It’s steamy-hot here in New England, the kind of hot I thought I escaped when I left Missouri. The showers they promised us have evaporated, along with multiple other promises of showers, and we’re looking at temperature in the 90s, and humidity at 120 percent — or so it feels. As I type this, I …

Two cars, 11 people, 2,925 miles. And we’re still talking.

When my son suggested we all take a road trip out to Iowa to attend my niece’s wedding, I thought he was crazy. He has seven kids. I like my quiet. Not everyone likes long car rides and I don’t like to be in close quarters with people who don’t. But flying all of us …

And — just like that — he’s 32

This little sandy-haired guy — father of seven, recent law school graduate, hard-headed son of a…oh, wait. Never mind that last part — is turning 32 today. He was a much-loved and much-wanted baby who taught me everything I needed to know about unconditional love. This photo was taken on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, at his …

No, that woman is not hurting me.

So my daughter-in-law threw a party to celebrate two family graduations — one by her daughter, my oldest granddaughter, from high school, and one by her husband, my son, from law school. So of course there was a mechanical bull. And of course Carmen, my daughter-in-law’s mother, my son’s mother-in-law, and I climbed up to …

Go, Cards.

(Except I live in New England, and so for a scattered few moments in the baseball season, it’s go, Red Sox.) A few weeks ago, my son hatched a plan where we would take his two youngest (nearly-5-year old twins) to Fenway Park so they could get their first taste of his team, the Red …

In last week’s reading of the Hebrew scriptures…

I opened my Bible early one morning last week and read: No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall bet admitted to the assembly of the Lord. That’s an unusual way to start the day, even for me. I did not reflect long on that, because I have a vague …

In last weeks’ reading of the Hebrew scriptures:

I started this as a comment to something Leftover said, but here goes, anyway: (As a reminder, I, the fundamentalist with Mad Bible Skills, have started re-reading the Bible, from Gen. 1, using a guide I loaded onto my phone. Obviously, people read the Bible and find different things. Here’s what I found last week:) A man named …