This series is seriously wringing some serious handwringing out of me. To be clear, not once have I created a post by first finding the evidence of evolution and then posting it. It’s been more like this: “gee, I remember Candy Land looking a lot different…let me get out my old board.” “Oh, hey, Strawberry Shortcake, I love her! Is she still a thing?” “Polly Pocket! Is she still around?” Indeed, she is, but like the rest of the artifacts... Read more
Graeme turned four last month, and when it came down to it, he wanted a “knight party” not unlike (okay, almost exactly like) his brother’s medieval times birthday party of late 2011. Except there had to be more red. Because Graeme loves red. And the ferocious, lance-wielding boy: All he could talk about all day was cake, but then he barely ate any of it. But he blew out the candles even before we could finish singing ‘Happy Birthday.’ We... Read more
I was intrigued to read this week of a huge new Utah storehouse for taking care of Mormons and others in times of natural disasters. From The Christian Century: “Since its inception, the LDS Church has viewed looking after its members’ well-being as part of its core mission. During the Great Depression, when unemployment ran 30 percent among members, the church formalized its welfare system. It opened the first regional storehouse in 1937 in Salt Lake City and began to... Read more
I love spring. It is the season of quickening, of reviving, of death to life. At least in this part of the world, it strikes me as the perfect season to celebrate resurrection. Here, in one hand, I hold the flower and the fruit it is becoming: Hidden beneath green leaves are the small green fruits that will swell to rich, ripe redness: and plants that were only five in number last year have multiplied many times, a slow form... Read more
When I was a child, one of my favorite places to go on Long Island was the Long Island Game Farm, a perhaps-antiquated name for what is a small children’s zoo where you can pet, feed, and cuddle with a number of silly creatures. My mom and I took the boys there recently, and what a time we had! One of my favorite features of this particular place is that there are certain pens you get to go in and... Read more
Well, this little series is starting to feel like The Stepford Wives (1975, of course). “Strawberry Shortcake!” my mother said. “Has it happened to her, too?” It’s like that scene in The Stepford Wives right before Joanna stabs robot-Bobbie. (It’s happened to her, too!) Anyway, I had one of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls when I was little–it was Lemon Meringue, actually, and it was one of those weird dolls that you can give a bottle and she almost instantly pees... Read more
I had a new piece last week at the Christianity Today women’s blog on my own anxiety for my children’s safety and on the need for churches to join with other community members in protecting our most vulnerable: our children. Though I was never the victim of abuse, even as a child, I had a hazy awareness that abuse happened. In the late 1980s, my father, a pastor then between churches, spent a year at the New York City Bureau... Read more
Last week, I had the joy of hearing and seeing Shane Claiborne at the Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin College. He gave a great talk (which made me cry) and then I happened to literally brush arms with him next to him at a book stall: Thanks man, I said. It’s great to be here, he said, so genuine, with humility not manufactured or feigned. (By the way, readers, that’s a question I have. Is it possible to... Read more
Some friends and I were discussing some article I skimmed and promptly forgot everything about, including the site I read it on, except this: that a man wanted to divorce his wife because her tuna noodle casserole was so gross and she served it so often. I’ll have to check with my resident geeks (ie. my husband, Tim, and my dad, Tom) but I think the Talmud actually does provide some legitimation for these grounds for divorce–there’s a kind of... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
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A Response That Risks Something: People In The Computer Are Real People
I consider it a great privilege to spend so much of my time writing, and so while I don’t want to complain overly much about this negative aspect of writing, but anyone who has ever written or posted anything online knows the venom that comes (especially) from anonymous or semi-anonymous commenters. {The most outrageous one, probably, was one that attacked me for being a wealthy (ha!) hypocritical elitist by posting property values where I live relative to NY State averages;... Read more