While visiting recently in my mother’s kitchen, my brother mentioned that he hadn’t received my monthly newsletter in a while. “Could it be the spam filter?” I asked him “Maybe you need to whitelist the email addy.” I caught a glimpse of my mother’s bewildered face. “You have no idea what I just said, do …
I was a student at George Washington University when I first heard Washington, DC described as “where local news is national news.” Catchy, and true. I’ve lived most of my life in and around Washington and, not surprisingly, I’ve been privy to many historical events, good and bad. Even out here in Annapolis — 22 …
I admit it: I can’t really identify why I’m so gaga about lists. Lists of homophones, girl-name song titles, funny typos…the list goes on (I’ll soon be starting a list of bad puns). I don’t do it to raise funds for a cause, in the manner of collecting six million paper clips or walking for …
Ah, remember the good old days, when the title phrase was an efficacious insult instead of the come-hither teen-speak Stephenie Meyer fans have come to associate with all things vampire. I’m probably not the only one who remembers that the whole teen infatuation with hunky vampires began more than 20 years ago with the film, …
“…I’d join the Navy!” Thus reads a WWI Navy recruiting poster. One look at the modern Navy tells us that we’ve come a long way, baby. Since a very young age, I’d wanted to join the Navy; its structure, solidarity, and purpose always appealed to me. I might have been among the first class of …
Here I go again: a new list! This must be a symptom of menopause that no one ever tells you about. Crossing genres is one thing; compiling useless lists is quite another (but I still like doing it). The new list has popular songs with a girl’s name as the single-word title. Some are familiar (well, …
Those of you who read the Wasington Post Sunday magazine are familiar with columnist Gene Weingarten, whose perspective on everyday occurrences is laugh-out-loud funny. My favorite is from a few years ago, before phishing had gone mainstream. The Post had installed a state-of-the-art spam filter guaranteed to weed out links to porn sites or any emails with “questionable” language. …
April 21, 2009 is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, a memorial holiday brought to the forefront of contemporary American life with Steven Spielberg’s 1994 film,Schindler’s List. It certainly made me more cognizant of the profound implications of this day of observance. I didn’t realize, though, that Yom HaShoah was not an outgrowth of a menschy film director’s cause; it …
Crossing Polansky is on temporary hiatus during a family illness. Thank you. www.cynthiapgallagher.com
Most of us know by now that an author’s success is part skill, part determination, and part luck. The mystique of the published author rarely translates in real life to major celebrity and glamour. Consequently, my book signings at Borders are very different from, say, Carly Phillips.’ Because I’m not a household name — yet …