Reine Bayoc of SweetArt Bakeshop & Cafe (Credit: Lawrence Bryant, LB Photography) Reine Bayoc is a force of baking-and-cooking-from-scratch badassery and an original force of plant-based comfort food that is authentically Southern (and the #ChurchPicnicPlate hashtag is all hers). The woman whose roots began in McKenzie, Tennessee before she came…
A parlor game for those with more pallor than parlor: What would we do if we had no debts, no deadlines, nowhere we had to be? (No restrictions at all is so silly it shatters the fantasy; there are no games without rules.) The dollar amounts are not so large,…
This week Michael Hobbes’ September 19 investigative feature for the Huffington Post resonated with a lot of readers. So what did Hobbes’ report on for a piece that has garnered collective sighs and tears of relief, nods of understanding and recognition, defensiveness and ire from some medical professionals, head-shaking affirmation…
You know that old joke about English majors: “They don’t know anything, but they know where to go to find things out.” I resemble that remark. And as a former English major and common reader, I see that learned skill as one of the glories of what we tremble to…
This past weekend I went apple-picking in Marine, Illinois, with my husband, 1-year-old daughter, and best friend Nicole. Marine is a lovely little village of 960 souls first settled by a sea captain and his sailor friends in the late 19th…
“This all kind of started because of a sarcastic comment that Peggy made on Facebook last fall,” Greg says of his wife, a privacy attorney with her own firm in Atlanta. “Someone had just gotten a Jawa costume approved by the Georgia Garrison of the 501st, and…
Communities provide and take away, two forms of power that reinforce and balance each other until they do not. Bigger communities, such as cities, states, or nations, provide opportunities to earn a living; infrastructure such as roads to get to work and the store; and mutual aid—firefighters save our homes…
“For too long, cookbooks were considered merely utilitarian and deeply gendered, written mostly by women to teach mostly female readers how to keep house, feed their family, and perhaps even nourish their marriage. But as we look back, especially at books that have stood the test of time…
Groucho Marx visited the wreckage of the Führerbunker, in East Berlin, in 1958 with his young daughter. The remains of the structure were broken and jagged but still 20-feet tall, as if the war was just over. Groucho climbed up and began to do “a frenetic Charleston,…
Fifteen years ago a drunk and high driver smashed into the car that Charles and his wife were traveling in. Charles was badly hurt, had reconstructive surgeries, and continues to have crippling headaches several days a week. Because he has been prescribed many drugs, which often fail over time, he…