Anyone who has spent time participating in social media has seen their share of bad behavior: name-calling, meanness, and of course there’s spam. Anyone who has a blog – or reads them – has waded through comment sections, tiptoeing around the spurious and vicious remarks, trying to get to the heart of the matter. We […]
Gender Roles: Virile Verbs, Apathetic Adverbs, Nouns in the Nunnery
Musing on gender stereotypes, parts of speech, and love.
Do You Speak Your Mind?
Speaking up. Speaking out. Speakimg your mind… with confidence. Sounds easy, right? But it’s not. And you know what I just realized? I spend more time in conversation with adolescents than with adults. I think that’s a great thing. I am more inquisitive, more engaged, and more myself when dealing with those under the age […]
The Forest for the Trees
We were pressed for time. Again. While my son finished dressing and filling his backpack, I put a plate of fried eggs and toast on the table. Orange juice next to it. I paced a little. I hate running late. He swallowed down breakfast and gulped the juice, grabbed his things, asked for the car […]
Naming Conventions: Unconventional Nonsense?
River. Apple. Banjo. Sparrow. Diva Muffin? These are just a few of the odd celebrity names we might come across as we consume our daily pop culture media. What do you think? Would you do that to your kid? Or should I say “Kyd,” as in Kyd Duchovny (Tea Leoni and David Duchovny’s son)? Or […]
Terms of Endearment (Let Me Call You Sweetheart?)
Inappropriate terms of endearment? Just say NO.
Three little words
Three little words – you know the ones. We all want to hear them. We all want to say them. Those three little words are spun, sung, whispered and wished for. They are immortalized on film, they monopolize our music, and they pump blood through our most lauded literature. So why is saying “I love […]
Blindsided, Lopsided: Can We Ever See Clearly?
Looking at ourselves through our own eyes. Looking at ourselves from the outside in.
Remarriage Rules of Grammar: Past Imperfect, Future Conditional?
Oh, those French tenses! Imperfect, simple future, future perfect… If only life were that easy! I heard from a 40-year old colleague recently, about her upcoming remarriage. It got me thinking about pasts perfect and imperfect, present imperatives, and futures – of all sorts. And then of course – ghosts of marriage past. The woman […]
Pseudonymphomania
Ode to Pseudonymphomania A plethora of pseudonyms can serve a woman well… (Do you think the apple man was really William Tell?) Indeed, a breezy morn and not one lover round the place, a woman might a name or two decide she should embrace… So many meanings – dare I say, so little time to […]