I went and voted today and thought about this whole election process. Is it me or are you just disgusted with the amount of money that is spent on campaigning – from the most local politician to the highest rank, it is really abhorrent to think about the money that is spent. Do you know what I heard last night in passing when T turned on CNN for a few minutes? That Sarah Palin will…
We went to a fun costume party on Saturday night and we met a pediatrician who told us some very funny stories but perhaps the most memorable was about a mother who said she was starting to feel ostracized because she was still breastfeeding her eight year old daughter. I’m still giggling about that one. But seriously, being a mother is a constant reminder to summon all the patience you can find in your body…
We’re in the midst of some weather transition and it is perfectly aligned with the time change this weekend. We’re not lamenting an end to summer, but we are to this weekend, which was so breathtakingly gorgeous, it was hard to get inside and stay there. As a matter of fact, when I got back from my therapeutic yoga class on Sunday afternoon, I couldn’t force myself inside so I got my neighbor to sit…
Jonathan Alter: “Logic can convince but only emotion can motivate.” When I first became in charge of directing others’ work, I read a few books about leadership, not a lot, not Business School 101, but more like who are the good leaders and who aren’t – one tip I remembered is leaders lead by offering hope – and one thing I do know is that when you’re not hearing hope, you’re hearing the opposite.
With All Saints Day we have moved into the period of our darker selves, which will end around May day when we move back into the light. Dark is not necessarily a pejorative term here, you could think of it as your inner self, your cave, your interior. The dark quality of this period is usually countered with the candles and lights you encounter in nearly everyone’s religious holidays during this season. But it’s also…
We opened the partying season with Halloween here in New Orleans and now visitors beware, we now begin the every day is a reason to celebrate period in New Orleans that will not stop until next summer. So be prepared. Aside from Voodoo Fest, Voodoo on the Bayou, Krewe of Boo, Voodoo Festival, and everyone and their mother throwing a party for some reason or other and everyone costuming because it was the first opportunity…
Halloween is the weekend that begins all the goings on in New Orleans, although actually the goings on never seem to stop even in the dead of summer when you’d think they should. Voodoo and Halloween go together like red beans and rice, and Marie Laveau was the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans so it’s natural that around this time of year, with the first good reason to costume, in a city where the dead…
You know the saying this too shall pass, well sometimes I feel as if I have lived a thousand lives just inside a week and they are all in the construct of my mind. No really. It’s like I feel exhausted from the journey I’ve been on that culminated yesterday late afternoon in me going through some photographs of my mother for a memorial book I’m trying to put together and coming across one of…
T quoted some figure that a very small percentile of the people in the U.S. cook their own dinner. This came up because Tin’s nanny said she had never seen a family who cooked as much as this one. Here is a sample of the last week’s fixings: Indian spinach and lentils Arroz con gandules (courtesy of Puerto Rico) seasoned with Turkey tasso rather than ham Croatian stuffed peppers and zucchinis Redfish with kaffir lime…
This is Jimmy Carter’s speech delivered July 15, 1979 – I was going to highlight all the things that have not changed, but then realized NOTHING HAS CHANGED except for the worse – 9/11, the great Federal Government Levee Failure of 2005, the 2008 recession: Good evening. This is a special night for me. Exactly 3 years ago, on July 15, 1976, I accepted the nomination of my party to run for President of the…