Essays

A Cajun memoir about one of the most delicious aspects of growing up on the bayou.

They all lived Cajun-style, in the same yard, so Maria's whole life was within a 40-arpent plot of land...

An all-too matter-of-fact account of the author's experience of the last 7 hours of his mother's life.

I've come to understand that there are many dense layers underlying my passion for toast.

I don't toast. I never did toast much -- never was what you'd call a bread person.

Reverend Doughboy had no answer, and became so overwrought that he resigned his teaching post and spent his days wailing and rolling about in pig dung.

She said she'd let me push two more times and left. With the next push, she ran inside and said we had to do a C-section... I trusted her and that was that.

Whatever happened to all that lovely hippie shit?

"On my way out, a gay couple was sitting on the steps of City Hall, defeated.

All I could think of was, I'm going to have a son that will someday forgo good sense for idiotic thrills like surfing or skiing -- even with hepatitis threats.

We went out for Italian food and a movie and had a solid discussion on the real possibility that we were never going to have kids.

"There's poo in the bed," I whispered, shaking her shoulder in the dark.

"Truthfully, I wanted to get pregnant by some happy accident and deal with things as they arose. Instead, I have to try and make something happen: I'm trying to control destiny. I've never been very good at this."

A native Florida gal's memoir of her long-time feud with her childhood nemesis, and how the story ends.

While hubbie's away, she held her first-ever slumber party, with just the (adult) girls. The psychic-for-hire was just the dash of added fun Martha Stewart would never have thought of.

A detailed tribute that pays homage to the fallen star with a plethora of photos and an extensive retelling of his film career.

A chilling excerpt form the memoir of Kenya Prach, a Cambodian man who survived the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge,

"To say there were flaws in the finished product would be generous. The Mylar was torn in places. The fishing line was perfectly visible. One friend remarked that the ship from Plan Nine from Outer Space could take this thing out with one hit...."

"My wife yells at the cats, I yell at her to ask her if she is yelling at me, she yells at me to be quiet so she can yell at the cats. The cats yell for any number of reasons...."

The guy in front of me had to sit in a very strange position so he could play his trombone and not sock the guy in front of him in the head. At the altar was a drummer, pianist, bassist, and bongo drummer, and this church was ROCKIN.

Two-thousand two is, in fact, the first 4-digit palindromic year since 1991... which calendar wins as the oldest possible one to use?

In which I unearth the disturbingly profound truth... that I'm a lousy investigative reporter.

An appreciation of Oakland's Chinatown

Local girl makes like a tourist in her own town, for one interesting afternoon

On not being there...

"there's this interesting trend I've noticed... That is, using the words "bastard" and "son-of-a-bitch" is now considered not only civil, but almost a patriotic act..."

a first-hand report of the terrible recent events in Arlington, VA, by a noted playwright and Arlington resident.

an earlier wandering on the experience of being unemployed.