I recently saw the documentary Harvard Beats Yale, 29-29. As I sat in the dark theater watching aging white men dissect, play-by-play, a 40-year-old Ivy League football game, I laughed and cried and wondered how the hell it was happening that this movie about something that I couldn’t care less about was sucking me in […]

I have written here before about the design blog Poppytalk because the site has a fabulous and whimsical eye for everything from stationary and Christmas ornaments to shelving and chairs, with a focus on items that are handmade and often organic. Well, in case you hadn’t heard, times are tough and, if you haven’t walked […]

Like the cliché I am, the only real radio I listen to these days is NPR or WTJU. Even so, there are inevitably days at 8am when I don’t really want to be listening to Steve Inskeep or various Bach cantatas; sometimes, I just want to get up and get dressed to Levon Helm or […]

I remember how, back in the day, at Charlottesville High School in Mrs. Ruffner’s ninth grade World History class, my favorite part of every week was our current events quiz. Whereas most everyone else would groan and make generally painful expressions, nine times out of 10 I aced those quizzes; nothing felt better to my […]

If there is one underrated pastime in the book of life, it is that of talking about the weather. I could talk about it all day long to anyone who wanted to talk about it. The subject often gets mocked as boring, but to those weather-haters, I say, “Nay! But what could be more fascinating […]

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words. The question I then want to know the answer to is, how many words are 52,938 pictures worth? 52,938,000 words? I ask because as of November 12, that was how many photographs had been posted to Barack Obama’s Photostream on Flickr. The madness began […]

I’ll be honest: I am writing this thing the day after the election and I can’t concentrate. All I want to do is read the news and look at all the pictures from around the world of all the happy people and just revel in this moment, which really is, just, wow. While I realize […]

Despite the fact that words are one of the things I am supposed to be good at (a conclusion that might have been made by process of elimination due to the fact that I am certainly no good at numbers), I have never had a mind for word games. Scrabble, puns, riddles, crossword puzzles, Boggle, […]

The holiday season is fast approaching. This means one thing: The annual time to feel the pressure to say the things you feel in your heart to the people you care about is upon you. Soon, a stroll through the cards aisles of CVS or Hallmark or Harris Teeter—a stroll that might, at other times […]

My parents were visiting over Columbus Day weekend when the inevitable question arose. “So, Nell, have you been following the crisis on Wall Street?” my father asked. “I’ve been trying. I’ve been reading the paper but…” “But what?” “But that doesn’t mean I understand it!” My father then proceeded to summarize what I already knew […]