By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: We were having lunch at my favorite arts and crafts festival and my brother decided he didn't like what we were having and went off to find something else to eat. We settled in with our crab cake sandwiches and...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced last week that the recession is over. Excuse me if I don't start kicking up my heels. You know what this announcement reminds me of? Remember in the movie Poltergiest when, with the help...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I guess I wasn't home the day Katie Couric - or anyone else - called for my opinion on healthcare reform. I'm particularly disappointed to have missed Katie's call, which I'm sure happened, seeing as she used to live in...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Time will tell if President Obama managed to hit the "reset" button with his Wednesday evening speech to Congress on healthcare. But as long as the American public firmly divided into three camps - those who want free healthcare at...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: At last, the public humiliation is over. Many of you know what I am talking about: the agony caused by having to look for a job in what is clinically referred to as an "employers' job market;" meaning, there are...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: The California Republican Party has finally found a way to make its September convention in Rancho Mirage relevant. It's going to take up a proposal to make the Republican Party irrelevant in California elections for decades to come. Party Vice...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: In my book, August is almost as dismal and depressing as February. I know summer isn't over until Sept. 21, but my summer is over once I no longer have a vacation to anticipate and after I've had a tomato...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I am writing this from a bunker deep within the recesses of my house. Whether this dispatch will reach anyone before tragedy overtakes us, I cannot say. Just know that I have fought the good fight. Know that, whatever happens,...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Nearly six months after President Obama and the Democratic Congress passed a near-trillion dollar economic stimulus package, the American people finally saw results last week when the three-month "Cash for Clunkers" program exhausted all of its funding in just over...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Though I grew up 10 minutes from the eastern coastline of the U.S., I probably spent less time there than most people who lived hours away. But for the first 24 years of my life, I was dependent on the...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: I was an early and ardent supporter of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger but the compromises he made to achieve a "balanced" budget in 2009 now make me believe that the Golden State elected the wrong celebrity. We should have elected Suze...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Since we are in the thick of vacation season and as a sort of public service, I think it's time we review some of the more important rules of etiquette as it applies to both being a tourist and receiving...
By Chris Nolan
San Francisco, California: Sarah Palin. Sonia Sotomayor. These two women have almost nothing in common except gender - and a little time in the public eye. But thereby hangs a tale. And a look at how opportunity is and was created in this...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: It's the elephant in the living room of every human being trying to maintain a sane point of view about the society in which we live. There is just no way to get around the subject of Michael Jackson's death.
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Alaska Governor Sarah Palin shocked the nation Friday when she announced, abruptly, that she would vacate the Governor's Mansion on July 26. The suddenness of her announcement led to wild speculation over holiday barbecues for a simple reason: Palin's decision...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Are you reading this? Good for you! It's a dying art - or so it seems. It is with a certain amount of sadness that I've watched the demise of long-standing newspapers of record this past spring. One of the...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I couldn't help wondering, as each athletic dinner award recipient returned to their seat with a trophy the size of the Stanley Cup, what sort of message was being sent ... "This is it. This is as good as it's ever going to get.'" [...]
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Are there still some people out there that missed the memo about the devaluation of property values due to the housing market bust? I mean, are there really some people who didn't know that when housing market busts, it affects...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: This week, like millions of other mothers in the U.S., I will watch my last child graduate from high school. His brother's graduation was filled with the excitement of the newness of watching our first born become an adult and...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Following last week's decision on Proposition 8 by the California Supreme Court, proponents of marriage equality in the state rushed to lay the path to its undoing. The establishment gay rights groups are heading to the ballot box, with an...
By Mike Spinney
Townsend, Massachusetts: Memo to my fellow believers: we cannot force others to live by our standards, nor should we expect our government to impose those standards by legislative fiat.
[...]By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I will join your club, support your cause, volunteer to man your booth; but please, for the love of all you hold sacred, don't make me come to a meeting. Theoretically, having a meeting seems like a good idea: gather...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: The California Supreme Court has spoken, ruling that voters had the right to amend the state's constitution and eliminate the fundamental constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples. And while the legal arguments over Proposition 8 are settled, the issue...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I was blithely driving down the interstate one day when, looking ahead as I topped a hill, I noticed a line of cars stretching a half mile long in the right hand lane behind an exceptionally slow-moving vehicle. They were...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: For the second time in four years, California voters have "sent a message" to Sacramento, rejecting budget reforms in the face of spiraling deficits. Yesterday, California voters killed all but one of a package of budget ballot measures designed to...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: I was seven years old when a nun told me that any sins I didn't admit to in confession I would have to reveal at the end of the world to everyone who ever existed. Everyone. My parents would be...
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Last fall, the theocratic wing of the California Republican Party took solace in a narrow victory on Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment eliminating the right to marry for same-sex couples. They cobbled together a coalition with just enough Latino,...
By Mike Spinney
Townsend, Massachusetts: I doubt very much that I am the only person who, even in a post-9/11 world, is more troubled by the imminent prospect of having Big Brother as my constant driving companion than I am at the remote chance of becoming the next victim of [...]
By Chris Nolan
San Francisco, California: So, what is is about Michelle Obama's arms that's inspired a national semi-obsession? Everybody's got a pair. Why are her's so special? Well, there's the obvious. Among women of a certain age and class - a class that doesn't involve...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: It is not often that I get to gloat. I mean, it's not often that I get to gloat about something I, personally, accomplished. I can't gloat over Heir 2 graduating next month with a grade point average over 4.2...
By Kevin Weeks
Knoxville, Tennessee: Have you noticed how the more succinct a book's title is the longer the sub-title is? An example is Michael Ruhlman's new book on cooking titled Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. I'm sure this title...
' [...]By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Since the economy tanked, most Americans are so over buying Stuff. In fact, just talk to anyone: They never were into buying Stuff. They know other people who were into buying Stuff - usually an in-law; but they were always...
By Chris Nolan
San Francisco, California: So New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd and former San Francisco Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein drive past a bar....And the column that results in that adventure is nothing but a joke. A sad one. On them. As part of her...
By Kevin Weeks
Knoxville, Tennessee: Think of your body as a machine and adapt your energy input to your energy output. This is basic science, verified over 100s of years. But the current funky diet "theory" isn't even "theory" in the scientific sense - it's a guess based on hopeful [...]
By Mike Spinney
Townsend, Massachusetts: "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." That quote has echoed down through the years since it was first uttered and it is either praised for its insight or decried with varying degrees of fervor depending upon your view on the subject. For my [...]
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: My name is Jeanne Jackson and I'm an expert. An expert at what? I don't know yet. Give me a few months. Okay, so maybe it takes a little longer to become an expert at something. But apparently it doesn't...
By Kevin Weeks
Knoxville, Tennessee: I'm a great fan and promoter of eating food produced locally: something called eating in the "food-shed." A food-shed isn't one of the wooden buildings that I helped my father build while growing up on a farm, it's more akin...
' [...]By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: It comes as a relief that the top story this weekend was not about the economy, but about dogs. Just as the Obamas finally got their Portuguese Water Dog (a gift from Sen. Ted Kennedy), news came of the breeder...
By Mike Spinney
Townsend, Massachusetts: The phenomenon of these so-called protests, scheduled through oh-so-trendy social media utilities such as Facebook, Twitter, and Meetup, is almost laughable. Clicking on an invitation may give participants the warm and fuzzies, but it's far too easy for politicians to ignore such passive events, even' [...]
By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: On opposite coasts, New York and California have struggled in recent years with a public health obsession with obesity. In each state, there have been different solutions offered - both of which have rankled libertarians and conservatives who oppose big-government...
By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: There is no longer tolerance of anything as boring as listening to the human sounds of stuttering and stammering for a minute and a half. That's what people do; because most of us don't prepare an oratory for the benefit of leaving a message [...]
By Kevin Weeks
Knoxville, Tennessee: My stomach is rumbling. Well, not really rumbling so much as gurgling, burbling, growling, and I could swear it just made a barking kind of noise. (Frankly, the barking has me a bit worried.) You see, my house is innundated...
[...]By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Comedian Robert Klein once pointed out that astronaut Neil Armstrong had to be the classiest guy in the world because he could have made a boat load of money if, when taking that first step on the moon, he shouted,...
[...]By Mike Spinney
Townsend, Massachusetts: I see captains of American industry waiting around for a parting of the skies and a booming voice (echoing from somewhere in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.) to tell them everything's going to be alright. The only thing they need to do is show the' [...]
By Kevin Weeks
Knoxville, Tennessee: About this time ten years ago I had little stickers all over my house giving the Spanish word for various things such as lamps, tables, and the toilet. By far, though, the preponderance of stickers were in the kitchen labeling...
[...]By Scott Olin Schmidt
West Hollywood, California: Not two months into his Presidency and Barack Obama is showing the first signs of self-doubt. Stepping outside the arena of politics and policy for two television appearances last week, the President sent signals that he no longer believes in...
[...]By Jeanne Jackson
Star Tannery, Virginia: Under the category entitled "I Suspected as Much," scientists at the University of California, Davis, have discovered that what makes a teenagers brain unique is that some of the connections are missing. Seriously? They had to conduct a study for...
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