As much as I’d like to blame Hallmark, FTD, Whitman’s Sampler, Russell Stover, Brachs, and The Melting Pot for inventing Valentine’s Day to benefit the blood-sucking consumer industry, unfortunately I can’t. The fact is, February 14th has commemorated Saint Valentine, the patron saint of romantic love, since 269 A.D. However, that day was not a…
Holidays
Ain’t no Florence Nightingale
When I took my husband to the hospital for hip-replacement surgery recently, I envisioned myself playing the part of Florence Nightingale during his post-operative convalescence at home: propping his pillows, retrieving fresh ice packs, delivering steaming bowls of soup and neatly quartered sandwiches, topping off his water with candy-striped bendy straws. But instead, a few…
Attention-seeking, #MeToo, and the future of ‘The Bachelor’
On Monday nights, my 19-year-old daughter, Lilly, and I commandeer the television to watch a show that admittedly has no cultural value. Mindless entertainment, this reality show isn’t based on reality at all, but rather, it’s a carefully contrived dating competition, in which 30 women compete for the affections of one man in the midst…
It’s the little things: Why community is critical to warfighting
As I waited in line at the commissary, I perused the military newspapers in the rack — Hmm, so the Air Force is allowing beards now, hu? “Do you have any coupons, my dear?” the mocha-skinned commissary cashier interrupted my reading with her thick Rhode Island accent that I’d come to recognize so well. I…