Why on earth did he call the feather 'macaroni' anyway? Or was he talking about the hat?... In recent years I’ve spent a lot of time singing nonsense songs to my grandsons. Nursery rhymes and traditional children’s songs, often imperfectly remembered. So sometimes I make them up and improvise pure nonsense ... Read More...
America
The sight of escaping llamas in Arizona reminds Rita of a time when she discovered a slice of English village pathos in America... The llamas made a break for freedom. And freedom-loving Americans everywhere were captivated by the live video feed from suddenly diverted traffic helicopters. It was the most exiting ... Read More...
As an exceptionally cold winter grips the east coast of the US, Rita watches the country's infrastructure start to crack under the ice... It’s Pothole Season here in Maryland and pretty much everywhere in the U.S. this year, including states that rarely saw snow or ice in the past. Some people like ... Read More...
Rita decides to take a leaf out of the book of NBC's Brian Williams and jazz up her anecdotes a bit. So here's the story of Rita's Life in America: the Dramatic Version (with fact checking supplied by a scrupulous research librarian)... On my first flight out of New York the plane made a ... Read More...
Rita turns her attention to every parent's worst nightmare: the bad babysitter... “I’m fine Mom, I’m in the basement building a laser machine,” said my ten year old son when I phoned home to check on him. It was the first time I left him home alone. That was back in ... Read More...
A chance reading about a little boy abandoned at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair gets Douglas thinking... According to Erik Larsen in The Devil in the White City, visitors to the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair [above] were able to drop their children at an official daycare and retrieve them by claim ... Read More...
Jousting may have gone out of fashion in the Old World some time in the seventeenth century, but here in Maryland it is still going strong, in fact it is the official State Sport... I discovered this unlikely fact in a serendipitous way. Browsing a neighborhood flea market one day I ... Read More...
They simply wrote a lot of popular children's books about a family of bears. So how did the Berenstain's manage to enrage two quite different sets of modern moralists?... Usually the death of a prominent person is greeted with respectful appraisal. After a while it fades, but initially “don’t speak ill ... Read More...
Brit gets an eyeful of The Art of Pin-Up, TASCHEN's comprehensive new guide to a uniquely American art form... Men are simple creatures: show them a picture of an attractive woman in a revealing outfit and you can flog them pretty much anything, from magazines to toothpaste to joining the army. This straightforward ... Read More...
Is Francis the anti-American Pope?... I’m not sure that I believe in a God, but I do believe in Pope Francis. The man known as “the Bishop of the slums” in his native Argentina represents a brand of Catholicism I recognize from the era of Pope John XXIII. As a student ... Read More...
