Have you gotten your flu shot this year? If not, you should. We know people have a lot of excuses for skipping the vaccine: Too busy, too painful, too expensive.
Yes, it is a bit early to begin to think about Christmas. The pumpkin season just ended and Thanksgiving just passed us by.
But America’s Christmas tree farmers are just beginning to get warmed up. They produce a true “real green” product that will create jobs, is grown in the U.S.A. and is recyclable.
Washington’s Legacy Project is releasing a new biography of Slade Gorton’s influential 50-year career in public service at the state and national levels
Here’s a fine poem about a cricket by Catherine Tufariello, who lives in Indiana. I especially admire the way in which she uses rhyme without it ever taking control of the poetry, the way rhyme can.
Soon the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether making health care coverage mandatory for all Americans is constitutional or not. The principal question is whether the government should have the power to make people buy a particular product – in this case health insurance – regardless whether they want it or not.
When we’re on all fours in a garden, planting or weeding, we’re as close to our ancient ancestors as we’re going to get. Here, while he works in the dirt, Richard Levine feels the sacred looking over his shoulder.
Last week, congressional legislators voted to block a proposal by the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to improve the nutritional quality of the nation’s school lunches, which the agency says contain too much junk food and not enough fresh produce.
The ShoWare Center in Kent celebrated its 1 millionth guest , Friday, Nov. 18, during a Seattle Thunderbirds game.
My mother and her sisters were experts at using faint praise, and “Bless her heart” was a very useful tool for them. Richard Newman, of St. Louis, does a great job here of showing us how far that praise can be stretched.
It seems to me that most poems are set in spring or summer, and I was pleased to discover this one by Molly Fisk, a Californian, set in cold midwinter.
I was taking my daughter and her friend to laser tag the other day and my daughter said to her friend that she has less of a life than most others. I asked her what she meant by that and she said because all she does is sit in her room, Skype with her friends and watch anime shows in her free time.
During the past 20 years, Americans have become increasingly aware that their diet plays a significant role for their health. They also have become more disillusioned about the nutritional quality of the foods they are actually eating. Despite of these changes in awareness, most people’s eating habits have largely remained unchanged and the obesity crisis has worsened. These are the findings of a study report issued by the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
I love listening to shop talk, to overhear people talking about their work. Their speech is not only rich with the colorful names of tools and processes, but it’s also full of resignation.
I made cake!
I started making a wacky cake, which is a chocolate cake from scratch last weekend, an old favorite from my childhood. My oldest daughter came into the kitchen and asked me if I was making the coffee cake with the raisins, another old favorite called depression cake.
As I write this I am chaperoning my daughters and several of their friends at an anime convention in the Bellevue Hilton Hotel. Anime is Japanese cartoons, movies, and drawings, but also includes any “cult” favorite character(I saw Where’s Waldo, the miner in Toy Story 2, a cheerleader from Glee and the phone booth in Dr. Who). Part of the fun of attending such a convention is cos-play, which is dressing up as a favorite character; the costumes range from simple to elaborate.
Americans continue to have a much higher sodium intake than they should and most don’t care or don’t believe that it’s a major health concern, according to two new studies that were done for the American Dietetic Association (ADA).
This week’s column is by Ladan Osman, who is originally from Somalia but who now lives in Chicago. I like “Tonight” for the way it looks with clear eyes at one of the rough edges of American life, then greets us with a hopeful wave.
Last Friday morning as my oldest daughter was leaving for school she told me she didn’t have any clean pants. She was wearing Capri pants and although I noticed, I didn’t think anything of it because of our recent balmy autumn days.
If you’re a person with a penchant for seasonal decorating, why not fashion the interior of your home with change in mind? By planning ahead, you can make it easy to modify your surroundings to be seasonally- or even holiday-appropriate.
Have you heard the joke about the husband and wife who decide it’s time to go to bed? It goes something like this:
A husband and wife are watching TV in the family room and the wife gets up and announces she is going to bed. On her way to bed she pauses to pick up a few items of clothing someone left on a chair. She picks up someone’s shoes in the middle of the floor.
[flipp] 