OBTW/New technotoys are good for achieving new heights -- in frustration, exasperation and blood pressure (02/08/08)
When cell phones with cameras first came out, a married couple I know took their new phones with them on vacation. When they arrived at their destination, they spent the first 20 minutes or so taking pictures of each other sitting on the hotel room sofa and testing the phones by sending the photos to each other...

OBTW/You can fool all of the people some of the time, but ... (01/04/08)
The truth needs so little rehearsal. -- Barbara Kingsolver, "Animal Dreams" The first lie, like the first murder, is the hardest. "I am not a crook." "I did not sleep with that woman." "My Daddy died this year in Iraq." After that, it apparently gets a lot easier...

OBTW/Hope for the hat (12/21/07)
Did you notice my new picture? I mean the one with the hat, over there on the right. The hat is a gift from my co-workers and I love it. Hildy Johnson never had such a cool hat as this one. Remember the days when most people, especially women, wore hats?...

OBTW/Teach by learning: The gift of giving doesn't give itself (11/21/07)
"Teach your children well ... and feed them on your dreams." -- Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Every day, with everything we do, we teach our children something about ourselves and about them and about their place in the scheme of things. Mostly, we don't even know we're doing it...

OBTW/Food for our feasts comes from far-flung lands (11/16/07)
It's only a little less than a week until Thanksgiving -- the day when America sits down at the table with friends and family and relishes the fruits of the harvest. Before you sit down and dig in, though, let's talk about those "fruits of the harvest." Any idea where they came from?...

OBTW/What were we thinking? Only the Census Bureau knows for sure (11/09/07)
It was a dark and stormy night, as they say. One rainy evening in February 1968, a knock on the door of my tiny apartment in Yuba City, Calif., changed my life. And, if you're a woman, it probably changed your life, too...

OBTW/Don't let the tidy exterior fool you: Sometimes organization is only skin deep (10/26/07)
Everybody I know thinks I'm the most organized person they know. It used to be true. Not now. Oh, I'm still pretty organized. Take my clothes, for example. Look into my closet and you'll find that all the blouses are on one side, all the pants and long skirts on the other. All the short skirts are together, too...

OBTW/Friendship and geography (09/28/07)
My friend Peggy and I met close to 25 years ago, when our daughters, both named Sara, were barely seven years old. One of the very first things we did together was take the girls to a movie. As we pulled up to the first intersection, I turned my left blinker on. Peggy asked me if I knew where the theater was...

OBTW/Living in poverty: Momentum in the wrong direction (09/14/07)
I went to a meeting at the Marshall Saline Development Corporation office on Tuesday, Sept. 11, and heard this story: "My name is Orson Olson. I'm 36 years old and I have three kids -- two boys and a girl. I'm still married, but my wife ran off about a year ago and left the kids with me. ...

OBTW/It's not the destination; it's the journey (08/31/07)
Consider this scenario: A man and a woman are driving past a Harley dealership and decide to stop in "just for a look." The man inspects the bike from stem to stern. He's thinking, "This is one fantastic ride. I can already feel the wind in my face, the freedom, the open road!"...