Two years ago, my NY friends gave me a really great 30th birthday gift — a gift certificate for winetasting classes at the Washington Wine Academy here in DC.  I was very touched and excited to learn more about one of my favorite drinks.    It took Frank and me a full year to use [...]

I was dismayed to read that there may soon be a rash of “pro-life drugstores” breaking out around the country. (Washington Post article here.) These will be drugstores that will refuse to carry the birth control pill, the morning after pill, and condoms (yet will likely still carry erectile dysfunction drugs). What about the ethical [...]

I was reading Monkey Daddy’s blog the other day and he had a link to a really great article on Slate.com: Is This Tantrum on the Record? The ground rules for writing about your kids. By Emily Bazelon http://www.slate.com/id/2192374/ I found this really interesting — particularly since we post pictures of nephews and nieces and [...]

In college I was fortunate to have two fantastic mentors as thesis advisors.  One of those great mentors was history professor, David Schalk. Mr. Schalk (at Vassar no one uses “Dr.”) is a patient, loving man who always spoke with the highest regard of his wife.  She was also a Vassar graduate, and I had [...]

We had some tornado warnings here today, and earlier this afternoon there was suddenly some very high winds and heavy rain.  As I was running around the house closing windows, we had some big branches fall in the yard.  Mr. McLaughlin and I cleaned them up when the rain stopped.