The robins are BACK, they don’t intend for you to miss them, flying like bats out of hell, tearing up the mulch, yelling at everybody and stalking around, sticking their tummies out. Wherever they’re going, they need to get there fast so they take a shortcut through my porch. I was out one morning trying […]
April 17 – 21, 2017 My neighbors, of whom I was exceedingly fond, moved away and I was sad. So I made a list of things to do to be a neighbor whose neighbors are sad to see you go. The People of LWON apparently live on different planets and their community listservs reflect that […]
I have neighbors who were also friends who have just moved away. I look at their house now and they’re not in it, it’s empty, they’re gone. I’m sad. Why should I care so much? It’s what urban America does, it moves away — stays a while, then moves somewhere else. I’m used to it. […]
April 10 – 14, 2017 The word was, DC’s famous cherry blossoms had died untimely deaths due to cold and ice. Wrong, says Helen, and proves it, sepal by sepal, petal by petal. The music behind the math in movies, says Guest Stephen Ornes, can sound just like the math: doubling back, laying down patterns, […]
[UPDATE: see links below* for the titles of predatory journals] In honor of the posts of Michelle Nijhuis and Christie Aschwanden, too many posts to link to, about the detection, prevention, and treatment of bullshit. I hate being lied to. I purely hate it. I hate it with a cold, hard hate. I understand that […]
March 27 – 31, 2017 One of LWON’s preoccupations is with the prevention, detection, and abolition of bullshit. Christie, who often writes about controversies, gets angry emails which she understands and which suggest to her bullshit’s cause. Cassie’s friend, Neda, has lots of hair which she wears in a bun which, every time she goes […]
February 27 – March 3, 2017 In uncertain times, Michelle turns to crime novels, the one certain world in which reasoning is logical, evidence is crucial, mysteries are solved, and the good guys win. Jennifer calls her Aunt Judy (famed commenter on LWON), asks how she’s doing. “Terrible,” she says. So Jennifer calls her dad, […]
Writing about people who are a normal mixture of good and bad is already hard. Writing about good people is close to impossible. I wrote a profile once about a doctor who was just plain good. He wasn’t a do-gooder – “I’m not a missionary,” he’d say; he was just a man who needed to […]