Barb Taub's Blog, page 153
October 6, 2013
OCCUPY WASHINGTON (toilets)
From a column I wrote for the Champaign Urbana News Gazette, June 1991 (NOTE: If you substitute a very few words, this still works. Scary.)
I just heard that the government’s partial shutdown is close to resolution. Instead of cheering, I’d like to propose a different strategy for next year. Here’s how it would work:
SCENE: Morning of June 30, 1992 September 28, 2014. The Legislature wakes up and says to itself, “What a great day to enact some meaningful legislation like naming the Official Sta...
October 4, 2013
Group Effect: Ninja Stuff-Finding Radar
Reblogged from Bastet and Sekhmet's Library:
Group Effect
Ninja stuff-finding radar
My man wouldn't get very far
Without my Ninja stuff-finding radar.
When he really needs something you see,
Helplessly, he relies completely on me,
'cause I'm a woman.
My friend Bastet can make hilarious and moving poetry from anything. But I think she's outdone herself with this ode that grew out of an exchange of comments from my last post.
October 2, 2013
Top Ten Reasons for Men to Get Married
**WARNING: this blog post contains a really scary spider.**
Some months ago, I wrote about the top ten reasons not to get married (for women). Several people have asked for equal time for men, so here goes.
Your mother told you. Your friends warned you. Study after study showed you the facts: men who are married are richer and healthier. They live longer too. (No, it doesn’t just seem that way…)
‘It became fashionable in the 1970s for the humiliated Thai wife to wait until her husband fell aslee...
September 24, 2013
Review: Effective Promotion by Mary Rosenblum
Review: Effective Promotion by Mary Rosenblum
I really have no excuse. For quite a while now, I’ve been reading Mary Rosenblum’s incredibly helpful newsletters and blog on The New Writer’s Interface. She’s been a generous mentor and kickass editor. And most of all, she has always been right. Always. (Okay, Mary – you were even right about the blog. Curse you.) So why haven’t I followed every one of her hints and suggestions, every golden tip?
Well, if I ever did have an excuse, I certainly don’...
September 22, 2013
Bastet’s Sunday Writing Post prompt
My friend Bastet challenged us to a Power Short with the theme “Romance”. Her’swas great. [see it here] Mine was… long. With her usual brilliance, Bastet collaborated to cut it back. Still too long, but here is our joint effort.
WAITING
She squinted up at her granddaughter, “I’ve been coming to this beach for seventy-odd years. You don’t need to wait here with me.”
She remembered summer mornings with him, sailing their little boat, her red silk scarf as their flag. Long afternoons they drifted,...
September 18, 2013
You know you’re old when…
Every time I go to New York, I learn something new. Last week, I learned that I’m one of these people.
PRIORITY SEATING: Please offer your seat to a pregnant woman. Unless she’s wearing a Red Sox hat.
I know that because every single time I got onto a subway, people leaped up to offer me their seat. My baby is in college, and the only happy event I’m expecting is the release of the new iPhones. (My death-by-techie brother sometimes gives me his old ones.) So that leaves the three-legger. Wait…...
September 12, 2013
It Really Was A Swell Funeral
It was a swell funeral that brought us together. I was in college in Chicago when my mother told me one of my cousins had taken up residence in the Home For Unwed Nurses next to the university’s hospital.Naturally, I avoided her.
It wasn’t just that I had plenty of spare cousins. (Although my Irish-Catholic forebears had followed the commandment to “Be fruitful and mul...
September 6, 2013
One Way Fare — Released Today!
It’s here!
One Way Fareis out from Taliesin Publishing and available on their website. There are several distributors, but here is a short list of links whereOne Way Fareis now available for download:
Taliesin Publishing
Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes & Noble(Nook)
OmniLit
Kobo
This is such a fine book, with strong and compelling characters, a rocketing pace, and a fun and fully invented world where heaven meets earth and earth sometimes beats out heaven! It’s well worth the read. — Mary Rosenblum, best-sel...
August 20, 2013
ONE WAY FARE — Release date, book trailer, and big news.
The next release in the Null City series:
He Knows If You’ve Been Bad or Good,
coming this holiday season
Lette has a secret dream in which she touches someone and nothing happens. Hope flares each morning in the tiny flash of a second before she touches that first thing. And destroys it. Every day whatever she touches converts into something new, from bunnies to bombs to polka-dots. Her online journal spans a decade, starting with the day a thirteen-year-old inherits an...
August 6, 2013
Parenting. This is nothing we were ever trained for.
Parenting: grace under pressure? Not so much… (NOTE: click link at bottom of post for musical accompaniment.)
BLAST FROM THE PAST:Barb Taub, Weekly Column, Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, Nov. 1989
My mother’s hair is getting pretty grey. As she has 10 children, I can’t figure out why it has taken her this long. I myself can identify the source of each of my well-deserved and rapidly multiplying silver threads. Take the events of a typical morning like November 7:
2:3...
