West of the Moon

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the practically-self-parody thing.

I mean, Williamsburg isn’t all happy neighborly interactions.  A week or two ago, there were these three guys dressed as pirates cruising the block in a red convertible.  Every so often they’d park the car and get out and do something incomprehensible (at least from where I was watching) involving a big glass fishtank, passerby [...]

Tags: brooklyn, effing hipsters, williamsburg

life in williamsburg.

Earlier this week, while I was trying to dig my car out of a snowbank, I found myself having a lot of conversations with neighbors.  (For the record: I did not put my car in a snowbank. I very carefully parked it, before the storm, about midway down the block, so that I wouldn’t be [...]

Tags: brooklyn, snow, these are the people in your neighborhood

things i’ve learned about cooking.

I have, somewhat to my chagrin, become one of those teachers who will go on (and on and on) with totally unfeigned enthusiasm saying things like “you’re learning new things all the time!  Everyone is learning new things! It’s awesome!”  I’m sure my students hate this about me, just like they hate when I make [...]

Tags: life lessons

revelation.

People!  Oh my god!  Pie crust is so much easier to make when it’s not sticky-awful humid summertime!  This was, like, zip-zip-zip, rolled out beautifully, cooks up all flaky-lovely.  This was fabulous.  (Pity that the good pie fruits all coincide with sticky-awful humid summer weather.) Pie #1, apple-cranberry-ginger, for me and Matt, is out of [...]

Tags: pie

links: “no, really, I have a lot of open windows” edition.

Can we all agree that Mondo was robbed?  Anyway.  Heidi Klum makes good on her love for the collection by wearing the super-fab bubbles dress. There’s a certain genius in what Jeph Jacques is doing, right?  To take the whole hilariously awkward “Marigold finds out that Tai is her favorite fanfic author” plot, turn that [...]

Tags: linkstravaganza

ben, on parenting advice.

So here’s the thing: I came down with some kind of sick towards the end of last week, sore throat and bad headache, and I spent all day Friday and a good chunk of Saturday just curled up under a blanket, reading or watching television.  This seems to have cured me of the sick, and [...]

Tags: ben is scary smart sometimes, guest post, parenting

links: feminism edition

“Mother Madness“.  Erica Jong critiques attachment parenting, and most of today’s other parenting culture along the way.  (Paired with a short essay from her daughter Molly, “Growing Up with Ma Jong“.)  I have more to say about Erica Jong’s piece than I can possibly manage to articulate at the moment, but the short version is [...]

Tags: linkstravaganza

marathon sunday.

The marathon got lucky, weather-wise.  I mean, it was cold.  Very cold.  But it was also clear, which was a miracle.  It was rainy and overcast for days and days, and it’s going to be rainy (or worse) for the next few days, but Sunday?  The sky was this flat blue unmarked shell, that kind [...]

friday links: news edition!

“Lies, Damn Lies, and Medical Science“, from the November 2010 Atlantic Monthly.  A look at meta-research in medical science which seems to be suggesting… well, I was going to say it suggests everything we know in medicine is wrong, but I think it actually suggests that we just don’t know anything. “The Myth of Charter [...]

visualization.

Scene from last Sunday night: Me: “Oh, you know, I keep forgetting to mention this, but the school is sending me to a mini-conference thing on Thursday.  Something about visual presentations, the guy’s name is Tuft, or Tuftey, or something…” Matt: [staring intently at me]  ”Edward Tufte? As in, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [...]