It is impossible to know what JD Salinger did to celebrate his 90th birthday a few days ago on January 1, but if he was anywhere near the internet, he could not have failed to notice the many tributes he has inspired. The quality of the tributes, however, leave much to be desired. Even the good ones...

Donald Pittenger writes: Dear Blowhards -- If possible, I write about artists whose work I've seen in person rather than in reproduction. That doesn't apply for George Washington Thomas Lambert (1873-1930), born in St. Petersburg of an American father and English mother, raised in Australia, studied...

This squicks me out a little...

Nothing like a non-self-imposed deadline to get those Top 10 lists agoing. Somehow, I never even wound-up publishing my list for 2007, and I figure, it’s a little late now, even for me. And while 2008 is not yet complete and there are a slew of films I still plan to see over the holidays (I’m cu...

Elizabeth Jane Howard's The Light Years (fir st in the Cazalet Chron icles) was better this tim e around than the first, though I admit I'd forg otten most of the details as it's been a good eight or ten years since I'd read it originally.  One of the blurbs on the ...

Help me out here. I can't figure out what day of Christmas today is for my countdown. Don't blame me, blame my mathematical learning disability. Okay, so I know that Christmas is about the spirit of giving. But I think it's fun to remember the "what in the heck?" gifts too. Lik...

Getting the traces of vomit out of your ear when it has been directly vomited into. Do you know what else is hard? Not collapsing into a ball of self-pity when you have grading to finish and a million things to prep for your first MLA experience, about which you are quite nervous, and your kid proje...

I hope the bitches at Agnes Scott start a serious ruckus over this. Short story: like many schools with picturesque campuses, Agnes Scott brings in extra revenue by basically renting out portions of the campus for film shots occasionally. Louisa Hill, guest-blogging at the Bilerico Project, writs a ...

I didn’t mean to be gone so long. The thing is, I’m feeling funky, and not in a good, James Brown kind of way. My mood seems to lurch from one place to another, and as a result I keep starting to write about, say, how annoyed I am, or how sad, or how wistful, and ten minutes later Simone summons...

Shallow roots will not yield authentic community with poor and suffering people. I can only offer what I have first received. The watching world needs to see deeply rooted faith. by Sybil D. Smith...