From the category archives:

soap box

The Label Maker

June 24, 2009

I never identified myself using labels.
That isn’t to say that I can’t be labeled. I am many things: wife, daughter, sister, friend, mother, partner, writer, worker, sister … the list is long. Many of the labels I’ve worn include “not”—not popular, not outgoing.
But when it comes to -isms, I just don’t think about them. Don’t [...]

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Election Day

November 4, 2008

I was 25 years old when I covered my first election day.
I worked for a small chain of weekly suburban newspapers, and my beat was the largest in the group—and the most Republican. The citizens of this small town voted regularly and predictably, with very little dissent.
Not at that time a very political animal, I [...]

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Disgusting

October 29, 2008

There we sat, in a McDonald’s rest stop just west of Buffalo, listening to a political ad.
The ad called Barack Obama a chicken, for voting “present” in the Illinois legislature. My husband pointed out that the number of votes called during the candidate’s tenure was so high as to render the statistic irrelevant.
“Disgusting,” I said, [...]

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Enough About Me

September 19, 2008

I’m sick of myself.
Seriously.
How much whining can one woman do?
A lot, it turns out. Y’all are lucky I didn’t have this here blog when The Poo was born. Gak, what a bore that would have been:
“Oh, woe is me, my baby sleeps through the night, but she wakes up at 6 AM! YES, 6 AM!!”
Oy, [...]

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Family Values

September 2, 2008
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Think Globally, Act Locally: Everybody Eats

October 17, 2007

Do you ever think about how much food you waste?
I do.
And when I hear facts like these about the Eastern Illinois Foodbank, I feel even worse:

While the Foodbank distributed 5 million pounds of food to agencies and programs in its 14-county service area in 2006, the actual need is closer to 20 million pounds.

There [...]

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