Back in the day, for several hundred days, I was the editor for three community newspapers and wrote a weekly column for a daily newspaper. That meant that everything I did that week came out on Thursday. It was the one day of the week I could take at least half a breath — and it was the day when it hit the fan. If I wasn’t getting calls about the column, then someone was accusing us of having personal vendettas against high-school kids because his kid’s photo wasn’t in the paper. Despite all that, Thursdays were actually kind of fun.
The B Section: Liberal bias, intellectual dishonesty and J.K. Rowling
A longtime editor for NPR recently published an essay about his assertion that NPR had gone astray. If you’re someone who thinks as obsessively about good journalism as I do, you should read it. Unfortunately, it did require me to visit the Free Press website for the first time, led by Bari Weiss, and I … Read more
The B Section: #ThrowbackThursday
Right around this time in 2022, I was wandering around the University of North Carolina campus finally putting two and two together. I’d been invited to participate in a roundtable about journalism and noticed that the ride from the airport to the university was congested. The Lyft driver said something people being there for the … Read more
The B Section: Issue 2
Look, I didn’t care about Kate Middleton at all until the Associated Press killed that photo. Now, she has had to go public to acknowledge a cancer diagnosis and about five minutes after she released her long-awaited public statement, people were shaming the media – and themselves – for forcing the issue with her. And … Read more
The B Section: Issue 1
Hi! I’m starting a newsletter! I have been thinking about doing this for more than a year. But when your perfectionism is crippling – as mine can be – you convince yourself that you have to do so much work to get it out there. Which service? Who should I send it to? What will … Read more
Sept. 11, 2001
The early part of Sept. 11, in my memory, is like in the movies when memories move around the screen with streaks. It’s me, stirring from a sleep, straining to listen to a voicemail being downstairs in my townhouse left by the man who will be my boyfriend, my husband, my ex-husband as he vocally … Read more
Blast to the … Present
What I’m Working On For years, I’ve been compiling information about a housing development in Polk County called Indian Lake Estates. When we first moved here, we looked at a house there, which was almost perfect. Ultimately, we didn’t get it, but this development was started in the 1960s and is still somehow incomplete. Once … Read more
Next!
Have I mentioned here before how antsy I get when I run low on books? When I say “low on books,” it doesn’t mean I’m out of books I haven’t read, because that hasn’t happened since I was in grade school. No, we’re talking mostly about library books. Or new books. Anyway, when this happens, … Read more
All Kinds of Firsts
Apparently, it’s March. I feel like we just started this year. And yet it feels like it’s been going on forever. It’s wild. Part of it, I know, is that my life has been like a load of clothes in a dryer: just everything tossed about under intense heat. The good news is that the … Read more
The Roundup: Alias Grace
I refuse to watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” until a certain administration is out of the White House, because from what I hear, it’s tracking a little too close to reality and I can’t yet. But I looked for other Margaret Atwood books to read, and sure enough, I found “Alias Grace.” This book is about … Read more
End-of-Year Roundup!
Whew! 2019 was a heckuva decade. Good thing I had some books around to read. Here are my favorite books that *I* read this year (not that came out this year). It’s hard for me to find time to read. I have a job. Two kids. A side hustle. Three kids, actually, if you count … Read more