What People Are Reading
Recent
Popular Alltime
Recent Comments
Columns
Home Cookin'
May 23, 2013 12:00 am035-20-OPCOL-CARTOON5/16/2013-20
May 16, 2013 12:00 amWhat I've Learned
May 16, 2013 12:00 amHelen Sword, an associate professor at the University of Auckland, has coined a term that I like: zombie nouns.
Zombie nouns start out as vibrant, living verbs and adjectives, but experience a change that transforms them into the undead – nouns that lumber clumsily along with their arms outstretched, moaning as they go.
In movies, the appearance of zombies heightens tension as the living flee or try to defend themselves from the creatures. In writing, the appearance of zombie nouns does the opposite; it kills tension and momentum.
What I've Learned
May 09, 2013 12:00 amI read a number of years ago that many big corporate head hunters would take a prospective employee to lunch and use the meal to look for positive and negative traits that would influence the hiring decision. If, for example, the invitee salted food without first tasting it to see if it needed salt, this was considered a bad sign, an indicator that the person was lacking in judgment.
I would fail that test every time. My motto: if it's food, it needs more salt. Salt first, taste afterward. Then, if necessary, salt again.
03-18-OPCOL-LEARNED-18
May 02, 2013 12:00 amSituation comedies – we seem to have forgotten that that's what sitcom stands for – used to be about comedic situations, not about unsympathetic characters flinging insults at each other.
Insults, no matter how cleverly written, are still insults. They may coax a laugh out of us, but it's a hollow laugh, devoid of joy.
What I've Learned
Apr 25, 2013 12:00 amWhen Billy Joel was a boy, his mother made him take piano lessons. He liked the piano, but hated the lessons. He particularly disliked practicing and soon discovered a way to make it painless.
Instead of struggling through his assigned pieces, trying to decipher the written music, he improvised tunes in a similar mode. His mother had a vague idea what Beethoven should sound like, so he'd make up pieces of his own that sounded like what she expected to hear. This he could easily do.
Home Cookin’
Apr 25, 2013 12:00 amMamie’s Baked Beans
Mary Jane Newell, Oxford
2 Quart bean pot
2 Pounds Kidney or yellow eye beans
1 Pound salt pork
2/3 Cup to 1 cup molasses
2 Teaspoons dry mustard
4 Teaspoons salt
½ Teaspoon pepper
1 Medium onion
1 Teaspoon baking soda
035-16-YESTERDAYS-2013
Apr 18, 2013 12:00 amOn being a role model for your kids
Apr 18, 2013 12:00 am
2 years 6 days ago
2 years 3 weeks ago
2 years 3 weeks ago
2 years 13 weeks ago
2 years 13 weeks ago
2 years 22 weeks ago
2 years 22 weeks ago
2 years 23 weeks ago