Portland, Maine, sometimes dismissively known as “the other Portland,” the New England city that may not get as much attention as its funky, bigger sister in Oregon. That is a damned shame, however, because Portland, Maine is one of the most beautiful small towns you will find in the Union.
Last Friday Michelle Obama shared her struggles to conceive her daughters Malia and Sasha. As someone who has also experienced miscarriage, infertility, and IVF before conceiving, I am so grateful to the former First Lady for telling her personal story to the nation in her memoir Becoming. It is a…
Back in what was called (affectionately in the military) the Reagan-Bush years, I got out of the Army, did a bachelor’s in English and philosophy, then realized I needed a job. I had one unsolicited offer, to manage a city-park facility where I worked summers with a team of disadvantaged…
Sunday is Veterans Day, which Woodrow Wilson set in motion in 1919, when he asked the country to remember the armistice that ended WWI. Now it is a day to honor all those who have served in the military—distinct from Memorial Day (those killed serving in war) and Armed Forces…
Corporal punishment is an outmoded tool of parenting (and education, which is a whole other topic), so it is a sweet relief that the American Academy of Pediatrics officially rebuked spanking as an effective disciplinary tool on November 5. In all the news of…
An AH-1 Cobra gunship outside the VFW Post 5077, in O’Fallon, a town in Missouri’s 2d Congressional District, where Cort VanOstran (D) challenged incumbent Ann Walker (R). Some 120 people waited in line to vote during November’s midterm elections. If you were looking for a place to represent the split…
Stevie Wonder has not updated his 1984 classic song, “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” to reflect the reality that more people these days are texting messages of love and longing versus, well, calling. For many, talking on the phone with another human being is…
I was startled to see William T. Sherman, scourge of the South, on the Delmar Loop the other day. His name was underfoot on one of the hundreds of bronze stars in the sidewalks that honor those with some connection to St. Louis. Chuck Berry, Redd Foxx, T.S. Eliot, and…
When E.T. was released on June 11, 1982, I would have been three, almost four, years old. My mom took me to see Steven Spielberg and Melissa Mathison’s ode to gentle extraterrestrials and childhood wonder amid parental chaos. E.T. has stuck…
Tens of thousands of quakes have shaken the New Madrid Seismic Zone since they began to be recorded 200 years ago by non-Native people. Back then there was almost no infrastructure or building of significant size in the region to be damaged. In 1811 the population of St. Louis was only about 1200, and Memphis did not exist.