My dad told me about a series of comic books that were available when he was young—comics based on the plots of books commonly assigned to schoolchildren, which served as CliffNotes in those pre-Internet days when plagiarism generally meant that you copied either from a classmate or from the saved papers of students a year or two ahead of you. I’ve never actually seen one of those comic books, but I always liked the idea of them, even though I’ve... Read more
This is how Tiger and I feel about controversies in the blogosphere: Read more
I really do think that Truman Capote was pretty brilliant, even if his latter years were embarrassing and even if he was an ungraciously jealous friend to Harper Lee, and the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s is just…something. My favorite Capote piece is actually “A Christmas Memory” (if you haven’t read it, you should. With a hankie handy.) but Tiffany’s has something in it that I love, something that the Hollywood version totally erases. I’m not going to give it away,... Read more
A few weeks ago, my family and I had the pleasure of welcoming a bunch of people who were on a trip to Malawi to learn about how climate change is affecting folks here. I’d been in touch with the group’s leaders, including Ben Lowe of the Evangelical Environmental Network (EEN) about how possibly to meet up with the group as they traveled, but as plans finalized I realized I wouldn’t be able to do that, as I’m phobic both... Read more
Last year, I put myself into some pretty hot water when I wrote a post for Christianity Today’s her.meneutics blog called “Love Your Neighbor. Get Your Vaccines.” Well, ‘hot water’ in the sense that I had angry folks stalking me around the Internet to say mean things to me. At the time I wrote the piece, I assumed that most children who were unvaccinated (or under-vaccinated) were so because their parents had philosophical objections or believed–against plenty of solid scientific... Read more
I was perhaps seven years old when I first read the first few books in the American Girl ‘Molly’ series, even though I didn’t actually receive the coveted doll until the Christmas I was ten. It’s hard to say what made me love Molly more than the other American Girl characters then available: Kirsten, the Swedish pioneer; Samantha, the orphan being raised by her wealthy grandmother at the turn of the century. Like my friend Andrea, who also had Molly,... Read more
Why, yes, last week, I DID happen to see a mother cat nursing a kitten in the grocery store; thanks for asking! Read more
Today is the first International Day to End Obstetric Fistula. Please read on to learn about this devastating condition that affects millions of women in some of the poorest and most remote regions of the globe. “An obstetric fistula,” I said, standing in the pulpit of my 200-year old church, “is a hole between a woman’s vagina and her bowel, or between her vagina and her bladder.” The congregation’s discomfort was palpable. Later someone told me that they couldn’t believe... Read more
Improbably enough, there is an excellent Italian restaurant in Zomba, but they don’t serve pizza. I did, however, discuss pizza with the owner, not in order to demand that he make it but in order to get in my point, which is that a truly great NY slice of pizza can hold its head up among all the pizza in Italy and the world over. He didn’t quite agree—he thought that there were perhaps one or two establishments in all... Read more
I still haven’t quite gotten over the fact that things like avocados and bananas are now ‘local food,’ and sometimes very local. It’s a little weird to check the label on my vinegar and see that it has come from France while everything in the guacamole, even the salt, came from right around here. If only there were corn chips to go with it! But, happily, toast cut into strips is a good substitute. So there’s that. And, there are... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
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