Welcome to Snark Week at LWON. A number of years ago, when my wife was still in college, a prowler tried to break into her tiny bungalow in Berkeley, California. She heard him, first on the roof then at the door, furiously trying to get in. Normally she would rely on the dogs that lived […]
Special series
“There is something to be said for being with your teenage daughter and not showering for six days,” a mother told me recently. Daiva had just gotten back from a trip to Death Valley with her 16-year-old daughter where they cooked on a backpack stove and climbed over dunes. They drove to the farthest ends of […]
The night before I wrote this, I couldn’t sleep. There was a halfmoon beaming into my face through the windows, thrown open to diffuse the 90-degree heat that had collected like smoke in the eaves of my bedroom. There was my restlessness from poring through notes for a feature that I was trying and failing […]
My mother was dying. It was time to get ready. First came the visit to a funeral home where we walked among the coffins as if shopping for a new couch. Deep woods polished shiny; insides pillowed, all velvets and ruffles; pallbearer handlebars in brass or chrome. But no, too fancy, and she’d be cremated anyway, […]
My eight-year-old daughter is a fourth-generation perfectionist. In my family, the trait is matrilineal, so I know from firsthand experience that it has a few advantages. My daughter is likely to pay her bills on time and use semicolons correctly. She will not be intimidated by details. She will have a certain baseline competence that will make her […]
Today really feels like Thank God It’s Penis Friday, doesn’t it? This post originally appeared in February 2013. The alligator harvest at Louisiana’s Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge happened every September, so in the fall of 2007, Diane Kelly packed her bags. She wasn’t hunting, but she still had to put her scalpels and knife blades and […]
If it is still freezing hard during the night where you live, you can try this easy and fun art project. Find some paper plates, cups, tupperware containers, anything with an interesting shape that you can get ice out of in one piece pretty easily. I like the paper plates because you can kind of […]
I am great believer in getting physical with nature. It is all well and good to take long walks, to photograph wildflowers, to gaze into the distance. But for many—and especially for kids—getting creative and interactive with the complex natural world is really what cements that bond between us and the outdoors. So for readers […]