WashingTina

Today we lost a giant.  We, those of us who trade in words, make words our lives, worship at the altar of words, lost a giant.  Nora Ephron, she of When Harry Met Sally , among others, changed the way women talk in movies, the way people talk in movies. And for that we will never be the same. This got me thinking about words and reading and writing, and where I might be without those who came before me.  I found my voice because of the imprints of those who wrote ahead of me and those who taught me to love words.  I remember when I fell in love with reading, and by virtue of that, words and writing.  Third grade .  My favorite teacher, Miss Massey (along with my parents), pushed me to read more.  It was important.  Our classroom had a "bookworm," Sylvester, who grew each time one of us read a book.  Sylvester "lived" on the wall and grew by one "circle" for each book a kid in our class read.  By the end of the year, he stretched aroun...

The story of " Forest Boy " caught my attention this week, as it did with the international media. Just to catch you up, if you haven't already heard, Forest Boy claimed to have been living in the woods in Europe with his dad for five years.  The dad died, and Forest boy wandered into Berlin with his tent, rucksack, and a fantastic story. Of course, it later came out that he was actually a young Dutchman, who simply wanted to start over.  I was kind of bummed to hear it, because I love a good mystery and I find feral children fascinating. This got me thinking about some urban feral children that live right here in D.C.  WH and I recently completed a brief stint living in Cleveland Park while we searched for a new home (we found one!).  This is where we came upon the phenomenon known as the Feral Children of Cleveland Park.  Since we've moved south to our new neighborhood (Logan Circle), I haven't seen any Feral Children.  In fact, I never saw any in Ada...

I don't know about you, but I'm a little concerned about zombies.  I know I've been a skeptic in the past ( see here ), but recent events have lead me to believe that we are on the cusp of an all-out brain buffet. My sister has whipped me into a frenzy by continually posting zombie updates on her Facebook, and now I am starting to lose sleep.  I may or may not need help. Let's examine the facts for a moment.  A couple of months ago, I read about some sort of parasite that's turning bees into zombies .  Back in March, there was a story on this horrible mystery illness in Uganda that has completely incapacitated large numbers of children. Earlier this week, there was the guy in Miami who attacked a homeless guy by eating his face off (in case you've been living under a rock, there's more here ) -- so severe was the attack that he's even been dubbed the Miami Zombie, leading his girlfriend to assert that he was under a voodoo spell (and don't even ge...