What’s New
Kabul Beauty School
Do you remember early in the 2000s, when the US Army and NATO forces overthrew the Taliban, and the west was optimistic about Afghanistan's future? Khaled Hosseini’s first novel, The Kite Runner, closed as the war was being won and his exiled family prepared to return...
Chocolate Chip Cookies
Now that winter has been replaced by dense fog and thunderstorms, it’s time to bring out the big guns and blast the gloom away. When I was a kid, we spent nasty Saturdays making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Dad would hover like a vulture, exasperating me to no end...
Johnny Cash is My New Homeboy
On a recent road trip to Minneapolis, I listened to the NPR interview show Fresh Air, which rebroadcast an interview Terry Gross did with Johnny Cash in the late 1990s. He was in the news because 1) February 26 was the anniversary of his birthday, and 2) the last in...
Life Is Good When…
For the past month and a half, my cousin has been forwarding emails from her daughter, Lara, who is studying in Spain this semester. Lara is four days older than my daughter, and like Anne, she’s a junior in college. Reading Lara’s adventures has been pure delight....
Greek Salad
The produce section of the grocery store is a depressing place this time of year. The vegetables look downright exhausted, and the out-of-season fruits look like parodies of what’s available in summer and spring. Finding fruits and vegetables with crunch, flavor, and...
I Miss You, Dad
My father died thirteen years ago this day, though it’s more accurate to say he drew his last breath on March 4, 1997. The vibrant, extroverted leader who was my father spent thirty-eight years dying after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age twenty-nine....