The parking lot in front of my local Trader Joe’s is always a bumper-car mess. It’s easier to drive past it to park on one of the mall’s parking decks. From there it’s a quick walk through the inside of the mall, finished by ducking outside again to access the grocery store entrance. The mall…
Happy National Holiday
Happy Diatomaceous Earth Day! No, really. Friday, August 30th, is National Diatomaceous Earth Day. It’s also National Trail Mix Day and National Toasted Marshmallow Day. Despite this, I bet you still had to go to work today. That may be because none of the holidays I mentioned are federal holidays. There are eleven federal holidays…
Thorne Smith and the American Ghost
How do you prefer your ghosts? Do you like them spooky and atmospheric? Maybe you fancy something gothic, laced with fear and darkness. Perhaps you’re more the romantic type, savoring a good tale where the supernatural explores the human psyche. If any of those descriptions float your boat, I’ll direct you to Washington Irving, Edgar…
Wrote the Book, Hated the Movie
“I cried when I saw it. I said, ‘oh, God, what have they done?” “I was deeply disappointed.” It’s “crummy.” Ouch. Hardly the responses movie directors want after a screening. Worse, these comments didn’t come from random viewers, but from the authors of the books on which each film was based. (Which author said which…
The Lure of the Séance
Once, decades ago, I attended a séance. The medium, Mrs. B, had since childhood spoken to people nobody else could see. In her eighties, she’d been a minister in the Spiritualist church for years. She was part of a long tradition. The American Spiritualist movement dates back to 1848, when the Fox sisters of upstate…
Dreams
The earliest dream I remember featured a convertible careening down a wide flight of outdoor stairs, followed by a jack-o-lantern swooping from the sky to stick pins in me. Over half a century later, I can still see the vivid orange of the pumpkin, the deep indigo of the star-speckled sky where he lived. The…
William McKinley and Dinosaurs
Here’s what I can tell you about my recent visit to the William McKinley Presidential Library and Museum in Canton, Ohio: I didn’t visit the dinosaur exhibit, but I did see the planetarium. I know. I didn’t connect that stuff with the twenty-fifth president of the United States, either. Every president since Herbert Hoover has…
