What the hell is happening to this country?

The Camden (N.J.) Courier-Post has to be the most depressing newspaper in America. Even the editors must know it: At the paper’s home page on the web, local stories, many dealing with grinding poverty, shocking criminality, and brazen graft, are buried behind a link innocuously labeled “More South Jersey stories.”

What kind of congressman calls a sitting congresswoman “a bitch”? The kind like Rep. Cass Ballenger (R-N.C.), apparently.

Herb Ritts: 1952-2002.

Today’s column from Peggy Noonan, “Faces of Love,” has the schmaltz-o-meter going haywire.

As if the 20 to 30 inches of snow that hit Upstate New York on Christmas Day weren’t enough, there was also a mild earthquake in the northernmost region of New York State that afternoon.

Doesn’t it seem just a little unfair that a man who already is a millionaire was the sole winner in this week’s $315 million Powerball drawing?

The annual Philadelphia Mummers New Year’s Day Parade is less than a week away, for those who care about that kind of thing.

If by any chance you will be attending the American Historical Association’s 117th annual meeting in Chicago next week, be sure to attend Session No. 42, “Civil Society and State-Making in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.”

The session is scheduled for Friday, January 3, in the Crystal Room of the Palmer House, beginning at 2:30 p.m.

Among the panel’s distinguished speakers is Christopher Capozzola, Ph.D. (A.B., Harvard College, M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D., Columbia University), assistant professor of history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The topic of Dr. Capozzola’s paper is “The Clubwoman as Statebuilder: Women’s Organizations and the U. S. Government during World War I.”

I know Dr. Capozzola, um, vaguely -- yeah, that’s it, vaguely -- and I’m sure you will enjoy his presentation.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a soft touch when it comes to tear-jerker stories about people who give their time, energy, and hearts to volunteer activities, particularly those serving children, the elderly, and defenseless animals.

Stories such as these are the stock in trade of the Philadelphia Daily News, at least around certain holidays. It’s no surprise, then, that today’s Daily News includes three such stories under the paper’s broader rubric of “Angels of Christmas.”

The Daily News today tells the story of Miguel Rivera, a remarkable 32-year-old man who serves as the athletic director of the West Kensington Boys & Girls Club, and that of Joseph McCloskey, who each year plays Santa Claus at St. Christopher’s Hospital Hematology-Oncology Clinic (along with 17-year-old son Bill and his classmates from LaSalle College High School).

But it was the story of Donnie Wiggs that really knocked me over today.

Wiggs, 36, works as a dishwasher at the Sacred Heart Manor nursing home in Philadelphia’s Mount Airy neighborhood.

But there’s much more to his role at Sacred Heart than scrubbing pots and pans:

Every chance he gets, he frees himself from the pots in the kitchen to be among the home’s residents. . . .

Wiggs . . . loves working with aged and infirm people so much that he often volunteers his days off at Sacred Heart. With no pots to scrub in the kitchen, he can spend whole days with the home’s residents. Sometimes, he brings along his 3-year-old son, Donnie Jr. . . .

Recently, one of Wiggs’[s] Sacred Heart pals, a man who liked wearing a Phillies hat, became so depressed he stopped eating. Wiggs, an ardent Phillies fan himself, arranged a visit from Maje McDonald, who was batting coach for the Whiz Kids Phillies of the 1950s. . . . The man excitedly talked baseball with the former coach. Later, he started eating again. For a time, he was happy. After his recent death, the man’s daughter wrote a letter to Wiggs. “My mother and I were so comforted by your kindness,” the letter says.

Mary Smalls, Sacred Heart’s director of independent living and personal care, calls Wiggs “our mission in action.” “He’s a doll,” she said. . . .

Wiggs, who is divorced, said he thinks of the staff and residents at Sacred Heart Manor as a big extended family. . . .

It almost didn’t work out this way, said Wiggs, because of what he calls his “criminal past.” Thirteen years ago, Wiggs was convicted of carrying a firearm without a permit and receiving stolen goods. He’d been working at Sacred Heart for three months when, in 1998, a change in Pennsylvania’s Older Adults Protective Services Act barred ex-cons from working in nursing homes. Sacred Heart’s administrator, Sister M. Patricia Michael, said the law gave her no choice but to fire Wiggs.

A year ago, based on a challenge by Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, the portion of the law that prohibited ex-con employees was struck down by the state Commonwealth Court as unconstitutional.

Sacred Heart food service director Patricia A. Bridgeford couldn’t wait. “I hurried up and called Donnie to come back here. Why should something he did when he was young and knew no better affect what he does as a mature person?”

After he was forced to leave Sacred Heart, Wiggs, a 1997 graduate of Opportunities Industrialization Center’s hospitality program, worked for McDonald’s and Holiday Inn. He won commendations in both places, but he felt the nursing home was a special place.

The thing about Sacred Heart says Wiggs, “is that you may be depressed when you come in, but you won’t leave that way.”

I feel small in the face of men as such as Donnie Wiggs.

Manewhile, the Philadelphia Inquirer has been lobbing its own contributions to the genre lately, the most moving of which, for me at least, was “Giving the Gift of Dignity to Elderly,” by Mary Beth McCauley in the December 22 edition of the paper.

In this story we learn of Marne Dietterich and the organization she founded, Wrapping Presence, an outreach program of the Doylestown, Pa., Presbyterian Church, which brings Christmas shopping to the elderly in nursing homes who cannot get out to the stores and malls on their own.

Though they host a stream of visitors bearing candy canes and carols, they sorely miss being in on the Christmas preparations. And having themselves been the generous Santas of Christmases past, they are uncomfortable doing all the taking in a season of giving. . . .

Dietterich and her army of 130 volunteers, ages 5 to 81, are turning 11 area nursing homes into veritable North Poles this year. Because of them, residents can shop on-site, wrap, reminisce and munch cookies, making a seasonal mess of things while, in the background, Bing Crosby croons “White Christmas.”

There are volunteers who shop in advance for gifts to be “sold.” There are buddies to help each resident select and wrap. There are picture-takers, pinecone-corsage makers, and home cookie-bakers.

Dietterich and her elves open up shop, generally from 2 to 4 p.m., in a nursing home’s public rooms. There are separate departments for men, women and children. All store merchandise has been donated, or purchased with donations, so the gifts are free. Those who insist on paying will be “charged” -- one smile, maybe, or two hugs. . . .

The parties might look like mayhem, but they result from meticulous planning and a compassionate thoughtfulness. Six weeks ahead, Dietterich begins working with a home’s staff to learn which residents would like to shop. She gets the name, relationship, age and sex of the intended recipients, and lists all this on an index card.

If, as happens, a resident forgets the name of a beloved child or friend, for instance, his wrapping buddy can sneak a look at the card and subtly prompt him, sparing him embarrassment. . . .

The store stocks at least three gift choices for each recipient. “Choice gives the feeling of power,” said Dietterich. And because those who show up to shop inevitably outnumber those who signed up, there’s always more inventory than necessary.

Doylestown Presbyterian Church provides money, space and volunteer power to the nonprofit project, but Dietterich doesn’t consider it religious. “It’s a 100 percent humanitarian thing,” she said. Volunteers come from area Protestant, Catholic, Quaker and Jewish congregations, as well as from the local symphony and the Mercer Museum, where Dietterich works part time. Neither is the project strictly Christmas. “We will wrap their gifts in Hanukkah paper and, if someone wants it, Kwanzaa paper,” she said.

Dietterich leads her charges with a personality as expansive as the season. She wears the same big, plaid skirt -- full of pockets -- to each nursing home, according to volunteers, and can retrieve from its folds whatever the need of the moment, be it a first-aid kit, a screwdriver, or her red rhinestone glasses. . . .

Dietterich’s mother was the first to tell her how frustrating it can be not to do at least a little of the giving at Christmas. One year, her mother told her she hoped no one would visit because she was “always saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’” and had nothing to give in return. . . .

From her mother’s death in 1995 until a friend asked to help two years ago, Wrapping Presence was Dietterich’s self-funded personal outreach. Today, there are nursing homes waiting to be included, as well as Wrapping Presence offshoots in Michigan and Virginia. Friends in New York and New Hampshire plan to establish their own programs next year.

“This fills such a very little niche, and I know that,” Dietterich said. “But it is such an important niche, because it makes [residents] feel like complete people.”

God, I love this woman.

And with that I say, Merry Christmas, every one.

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer reports that police have arrested Edward Chinchillo, of Williamstown, N.J., and charged him with aggravated manslaughter in the December 20 death of Sister Mary Margaret Hynes of Camden, N.J.

(The death of Sister Peg, as she was known, was mentioned here yesterday. [Ed.: First item.])

According to the Inquirer, local police said Chinchillo “was steering his car with his knees while smoking crack cocaine” when his 2002 Lincoln LS crossed the center lines of Burnt Mill Rd. in Cherry Hill, N.J., careening into the 1997 Kia in which Sister Peg was a passenger.

Chinchillo’s wife, Janice Chinchillo, also was arrested and charged with aggravated manslaughter. Police said she passed the crack pipe to her husband while he was driving. In New Jersey, the charge of aggravated manslaughter carries a maximum 30-year sentence.

“Our investigation is ongoing, and we do anticipate filing additional charges. He manifested an absolute indifference to human life,” said Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi.

Sister Peg, who was 69 and a breast cancer survivor, was a member of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and development director of Heart of Camden Housing Corp., an arm of Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Church in that city. Heart of Camden rehabilitates abandoned houses and sells them at cost to poor families. To date the organization has created housing for 100 Camden families.

In an annual rite, Sister Peg was to deliver holiday food boxes to poor families in the city the day after she was killed.

The Inquirer story did not make clear how Chinchillo, who declared bankruptcy just last year and who at that time said he living on disability and Social Security payments, came into possession of his 2002 Lincoln.

[Post-publication addendum (December 24): I cannot find a web page for Heart of Camden Housing, but the Sacred Heart Church home page can be found here. More information about Sister Peg’s order, the Sisters of St. Joseph, can be found here. And donations in memory of Sister Peg should be sent to the Sisters of St. Joseph, 9701 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, Pa., 19118.]

Rather than relying on the dubious completeness of my e-mail address book, I thought I would post a few notes to my fellow bloggers here.

E-mail Addresses: If I can resolve certain technical glitches I am experiencing at the moment, I expect to change my e-mail address soon and will alert you to that change on the site and in a message to as many active bloggers as are currently in my address book. In preparation for doing so, it struck me to ask that if you change your e-mail address, drop me a line to let me know so that I can keep my files up to date.

Blogrolling.com: I can’t say enough positive things about Blogrolling.com. I highly recommend other bloggers adopt its technology or something similar. Blogrolling provides a great service to your readers, enabling them to see which sites on the blogroll recently have been updated. It is simple to set up, integrate, and update, and I say that as one who is somewhat technically impaired.

Site Retirement: In the unfortunate event that you decide to retire from blogging, please let me know. The blogroll, published in the sidebar in the right-hand column of this page, already is longer than I ever expected it would be. Although I haven’t sent a firm upper limit on the number of links that list may include, deleting retired blogs from that collection would create space for links to other bloggers.

New Blog Recommendations: I welcome suggestions for links to bloggers, both to established sites that I may have overlooked or to those who are just getting started. The authors or proprietors of such sites should not feel shy about directing me to their own blogs. Normally I will spend a few weeks looking at a blog on a prospective basis in order to avoid certain missteps I have made in the past, namely, linking to bloggers of dubious personal integrity and questionable mental stability.

Notable Posts: I welcome e-mail from bloggers who wish to draw my attention to particularly significant posts at their sites, though I cannot promise to note each piece or to acknowledge each e-mail received. Please avail yourself of this invitation judiciously.

Jeanne d’Arc of Body & Soul has published a moving essay on Christmas charity, “Would you like to hear my Ebeneezer Scrooge impression?” that has me feeling pretty conflicted because the other day I heard an angel died. She wasn’t really an angel, she was a nun in Camden, N.J., but that’s what people there called her when they weren’t calling her Sister Peg.

[Post-publication addendum: In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer there is a second article about Sister Mary Margaret Hynes, “Nun’s Death Leaves Void in Camden and Church.” In a sidebar to the article that is not included in the online version of the story, the Inquirer reports that donations in memory of Sister Peg may be sent to the Sisters of St. Joseph, 9701 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, Pa., 19118.]

The Liberal Oasis catches the Sunday political talk show hosts in their usual sleeping-on-the-job mode with “10 Things About Frist Unsaid Yesterday.”

I wonder what causes Sunday’s talking heads to so consistently overlook significant issues. Is it poor research, bad memories from the pre-show prep session, ignorance, political bias?

I think Jay Caruso and Jane Finch of the Daily Rant may have the potential to become the James Carville and Mary Matalin of political blogging . . . if only they would sign and return the consulting contract I sent them.

Easy Bake Coven has the “Holiday Stress Diet,” a sure-fire nutritional regimen to help you beat the tensions of the holiday season. It starts with a simple breakfast of one-half of a grapefruit, one slice of whole-wheat toast, and eight ounces of skim milk, but from there it’s all downhill.

Presumably Susan has enough light bulbs in stock to keep her oven working overtime this week.

Admitted Catholic-basher Matthew Yglesias asks, “Who’s Deluded?”, a post in which he quite rightly takes me to task for misunderstanding a previous post of his, and for that I apologize.

Actually, for the record, I don’t think Yglesias is a Catholic basher per se. Rather, I believe his writing at times reflects a more narrow understanding of Catholicism, the history of the Church, and the manner in which Catholics try to live their faith than is needed to tackle some of the issues he has addressed. I simply don’t think the culture of Catholicism ranks among his many strong suits.

Neal Pollack tells me the inestimable Lizz Westman, who is pretty much revered around here, tentatively will sub for him at his weblog, Neal Pollack’s Maelstrom, from December 23 through December 31.

I don’t know, something about Pollack’s new parental obligations, I think. Gee whiz, is that scary or what? It’s odd, I think, that one doesn’t need permission from any governmental authority to reproduce. But I digress.

Contrary to the currently circulating urban legend, Westman is a real person. A real woman, in fact, and not Pollack in drag.

Anyway, this is great news. Westman is one of the funniest writers I’ve ever encountered. She’s often funnier than, well, never mind.

Westman will make what is too often the dreariest week of the year a time to remember. I can’t wait. Be sure to pay her a visit during her interregnum.

Hey, I made the Los Angeles Times today!

No, I'm not in the news section, I'm on the op-ed page. No, I didn't write an article, I was mentioned in one. No, not by name, merely in a cowardly veiled reference. And not by anyone of any significance, just Norah Vincent.

In her usually-Thursdays column, this week entitled "Putting the Brakes on 'Blowhard Bloggers'," Vincent's ostensible topic is free speech and the web, as she discusses, at least in passing, a recent libel case in which a court ruled Dow Jones & Co., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal and Barron's, can be sued for damages in Australia under Australian libel law. After first overstating the significance of the case, she quickly moves to her true agenda: "It's all about me!"

For those of you who missed out the first time around, Vincent since August has been in a froth over an incident in which she claims "another blogger" accused her of plagiarism and, indeed, "libel."

As Vincent writes in today's Times:

In the major media world, editors and fact-checkers try to catch inaccuracies, excise lies and slanders and print corrections and retractions for mistakes that slip into print. But few bloggers follow this protocol. What they say, however outrageous or unfounded, tends to stick.

Full disclosure: This happened to me when I integrated four words from a Jackson Browne song into a piece I posted on my blog. Another blogger accused me of plagiarism, and the unmerited charge spread across the Web at frightening speed.

"Another blogger," as Vincent employs the phrase here, refers to me and to this site, The Rittenhouse Review, and probably to others, also unnamed, as well.

One wouldn't know that by reading Vincent's column. Nor would one know it by reading the initial defense Vincent published on her defunct weblog, Norah's BlogJam, on September 3, nor the second defense published there on September 4. For whatever reason, Vincent has chosen not to reveal the name of her purported accuser(s). I presume she thinks doing so will put her in the untoward position of assisting me/us in "trolling for hits" from someone so established and respected as she believes herself to be, a ludicrous and self-aggrandizing presumption upon which Vincent has relied in the past.

However, I can't help but wonder if the reason she refuses to name me or this weblog is because doing so would enable readers -- and perhaps her editors as well -- to review the facts of the matter. Instead, the self-styled renegade, the oh-so-put-upon Vincent takes to the pages of the Los Angeles Times of all places to smear my name and reputation using words and phrases like "blowhard," "any old varmint," "pipsqueak," "careless," "mad" [Ed: Angry?], "vengeful," and "half-wits." (I suppose all of this makes The Rittenhouse Review the Blog That Dare Not Speak Its Name.)

What we have here is Vincent accusing another writer of having accused her of plagiarism, and supposedly libeling her in the process, a charge from which she has defended herself repeatedly and vociferously, and now from the pages of the Los Angeles Times, while at the same time refusing, or at the very least declining, to identify publicly her alleged accuser(s). One would think a writer so outraged would have the courage and conviction to name the offending party. Instead, Vincent's posture is one of, "I was libeled. I won't tell you by whom. Just take my word."

She cannot have it both ways.

Regardless, the vaunted superiority Vincent today claims on behalf of the traditional print media's editors and fact-checkers for catching and correcting errors obviously doesn't apply to her and the Times. Her piece is tendentious, misleading, and dishonest. It's clever, though, the manner in which she attempts to use the traditional media's alleged superiority to her advantage. It goes like this: A blogger I will not name said something mean about me. I wrote in the L.A. Times that it's not true. The L.A. Times has editors and fact-checkers to make certain errors are corrected. Therefore, what is said about this matter in the L.A. Times must be true. End of story.

I don't think so.

The public record

Let's step back in time and review the public record. At The Rittenhouse Review on August 28 I published a piece entitled, "Norah Vincent: Tracing Noonan's Footsteps." In that article I criticized a post on Norah's BlogJam, published on August 28, a piece she described as a manuscript of hers that was rejected by the editors of the New York Sun.

I can no longer remember what her scribblings were supposed to be about, and the brief selections from the piece that I cited in my August 28 post, being typical of the rambling and discursive nature of Vincent's prose, provide few clues in retrospect. It hardly matters, as I cannot imagine her article was so interesting that it justifies my returning to it once again and I am very familiar with the particulars of the fall-out that ensued.

The following day, August 29, I received, in the form of an e-mail, a letter from a reader, the award-winning journalist Charles Pierce. I asked Pierce whether I could publish his letter at the site and he gave me permission to do so with his name attached. The letter was published, in its entirety, at the Review on August 29. In that letter, Pierce said certain words in Vincent's essay "rang familiar" and he questioned her originality, this on the basis of the similarity he noticed between Vincent's prose at a particular point in the article and, as he came to recall, the lyrics of an old Jackson Browne song, Browne not having been mentioned or cited in Vincent's essay.

Since Vincent has never named her purported accuser, it's not entirely clear whether she is aflame over Pierce's comments, which did not include the word "plagiarism," or over the headline that I attached thereto, my sole contribution to the exercise aside from deciding to publish the letter at all, which reads, wholly and entirely:

A READER WRITES . . .
Norah Vincent: Jackson Browne Fan -- And Plagiarist?

Was "plagiarist" the right word to use in this situation? I wasn't entirely sure then and I'm not sure now, and that's why I attached a question mark to the end of the sub-headline. In today's Times Vincent applauds weblogs because "unlike in the gated confines of print newspapers and magazines . . . anybody can participate in public debate on the Net." Well, participate they did, some defending Vincent and some not. The debate just didn't turn out the way Vincent wanted it to, and she's still not over it. Public debate is either healthy or it isn't, it doesn't depend upon the outcome, real or perceived.

She cannot have it both ways.

Instead of viewing the aftermath of the incident as a freewheeling exchange of ideas, Vincent in her self-contained, self-referential world found herself unfairly maligned, her reputation under attack, and her self-esteem, it would appear, almost mortally wounded. She lashed out, albeit ineffectively, a reaction that has continued in form and tone to this very day.

Vincent published her first defense against charges or suspicion of plagiarism at Norah's BlogJam on September 3, saying the accusation, such as it was, "requires a brief dismissal here." She continued:

The offending material? A famous Jackson Browne lyric to which I tipped my hat in an unpublished piece about 9/11. I said: "Reality hit hard that day, so hard that even Pearl Harbor seemed small by comparison, the fitful dream of this rude and much greater awakening." In his hit song "The Pretender" Browne sang "I want to know what became of the changes we waited for love to bring. Were they only the fitful dreams of some greater awakening?"

Leaving aside the dubious contention that Browne's lyric is "famous," coming, as it does, from a song that hit the airwaves in 1983, Vincent obfuscates the entire matter by referring to her essay as "an unpublished piece about 9/11."

"Unpublished" in what sense? Unpublished in the New York Sun, of course, which rejected the manuscript, a decision that, having been made by an upstart newspaper that isn't exactly bursting with copy, speaks volumes. But Vincent herself published it at Norah's BlogJam. Does Vincent mean to imply that posting an essay on her weblog means the article has not been published at all? By her faulty logic, if the piece wasn't really published at Norah's BlogJam then the alleged accusation of plagiarism wasn't really published at The Rittenhouse Review.

She cannot have it both ways.

Vincent similarly obfuscates when she tries to explain how the lyrics ended up in her essay:

I had, in fact, been listening to that song on my MP3 player about the time I was writing that piece, having downloaded it from the web. I've been a huge Browne fan since high school. Those four words crept, as lyrics are wont to do, into my subconscious, a place where, as anyone who actually makes a living as a writer knows, a great deal of one's work is done.

Well, as one who actually makes his living as a writer and has done so for more than 15 years, I ask: Which was it? Was Vincent deliberately tipping her hat and paying "obvious homage" [Ed: See quote, infra.] to a favorite songwriter? Or did the words emerge from her subconscious while she was writing the essay?

She cannot have it both ways.

Vincent's September 3 defense concluded:

There's no crime here. Nothing even beyond fair use, and obvious homage to a great and well known songwriter. End of story. The ridiculousness of this "charge" merits no further discussion.

Fine, she said her piece. But despite her contention that the matter "merits no further discussion," Vincent returned to the topic the very next day. At Norah's BlogJam on September 4 she complained of -- again unnamed -- webloggers who, in her words, try to draw attention to themselves by criticizing "legitimate targets":

By legitimate targets I mean people who have actually had some measure of success in their professional lives, people who get published regularly in the mainstream press because, yes, they have a certain degree of talent, but moreso because they have something more to say on a weekly basis than "boo hoo" or "look ma, no hands."

(I'll leave it to the readers of the L.A. Times to judge that last remark.)

With this little post, which, by the way, was where she first invented the charge of libel, Vincent disparaged and offended countless bloggers who take it as their right and duty to criticize not only public officials but the pundits who profess to monitor them. The very same bloggers, in fact, whom Vincent pretends to champion. For her own part, until she abandoned her erratic weblog, Vincent enjoyed straddling both sides of the fence: casting herself as a fiercely independent blogger breaking new ground in a democratizing new medium, but simultaneously posing as a writer who "had some measure of success" in her professional life, a lofty status that rendered her impervious to criticism from the "nasty riffraff" below.

She cannot have it both ways. (And, given that her site has been gathering dust for two months, it's clear Vincent prefers to lecture the hoi polloi from on high.)

Vincent concluded her September 4 post thusly:

As for the aforementioned -- though unnamed -- blogmonsters [sic], I have hereby railed enough against your poor and shallow tactics and will do so no more. You haven't earned respect from anyone, but I'll at least make an effort not to berate you any further. Instead I'll ignore you. So back to the swamp with you and the deserved obscurity from which you slithered.

I suppose it's not surprising that Vincent, who couldn't keep the pledge she made on September 3 even beyond September 4, has once again returned to this incident.

The heart of the matter

The heart of the matter here is that the determination of whether Vincent's use of Browne's lyrics, no matter how modest in scope, required her to refer the reader to the original writer is an editorial decision. That is, it would be incumbent upon Vincent to inform her editor that she was leaning on Browne and it would be up to Vincent's editor to determine whether an obscure 20-year-old lyric was sufficiently known and absorbed within the popular culture that the typical reader would knowingly catch Vincent's "tip of the hat."

However, by publishing the manuscript on her weblog, and doing so without saying it had been edited by the Sun (Actually, any reasonable reading of her August 26 post would lead to the conclusion that it had not been edited: rejected as "too rhetorical," she said they said.), Vincent was operating in the very same "virtual Wild West" about which she so crudely complained in her Times column: No editors, no fact-checkers, just Norah, writing and posting on her weblog, just like one of the peons.

Slyly, Vincent today says, "Common journalistic standards of accuracy and fair play exist for good reasons, and bloggers, like the rest of us, must abide by them." [Ed.: Emphasis added.] So now, at least as of today, Vincent is no mere blogger. She is a journalist, an assertion she makes without having even the slightest hint of experience as a reporter. She's not one of them, she's better, her once a week, 600-word, no doubt heavily edited Times piece presumably serving as prima facie evidence thereof.

As she approaches the end of her little piece, Vincent writes in high dudgeon: "So when bloggers willfully defame those with professional reputations to defend, that is a serious breach for which they should be held accountable."

I couldn't agree more.

Vincent is perhaps unaware, though she should not be -- nor should her editors and fact-checkers at the Times -- because this fact has been published on my site as well as those of several other writers: Although I don't earn any money from blogging, I am a writer and editor by profession.

It bears repeating: I earn my living by writing and editing.

Thus, I too have a professional reputation to defend. And neither Vincent nor the Times should be so presumptuous as to treat that reputation with such a reckless disregard for the facts and to so gleefully and carelessly throw around the disparaging terms that Vincent used and was allowed to use today. (Vincent's editor at the Times, who I have been informed is Mary Arno, has not returned my calls.)

Says Vincent:

Blogging is one of the best things that has ever happened to freedom of expression and the press, and we should make every effort to protect its scrupulous practitioners. But freedoms come with responsibilities. Common journalistic standards of accuracy and fair play exist for good reasons, and bloggers, like the rest of us, must abide by them. By drawing attention to libelous Web content, the Australian case may force them to.

Vincent's fit of pique notwithstanding, I consider myself to be a scrupulous practitioner of my craft, and I faithfully abide by the standards of accuracy and fair play. I have on several occasions published corrections when the circumstances warranted doing so. If Vincent disagrees, she can either continue to rant and rave to that effect from whatever forum may host her or she can use whatever other resources she has at her disposal to prove her contention.

She cannot have it both ways.

Are you reading or have you at least visited Andrew Tobias’s weblog on “Money and Other Subjects”?

Tobias, whose book, The Best Little Boy in the World (which originally was published under a pseudonym), changed my life, writes primarily about money and finance, something I’ve spent more than 15 years doing without applying anything I’ve learned to my own life.

Today Tobias has a smart piece about funding the Securities and Exchange Commission that I highly recommend, though that part about his trading in increments above $10,000 sort of gets on my nerves.

I hope things are okay chez Madeleine Begun Kane et mari. Sounds like things were a little testy there for a while. (See second item.)

Have you ever heard of or seen a “volcanic bomb”? I hadn’t either, until recently, but then again, I’m not Beth Bartel and I don’t live and work in Antarctica. Why not? Because I’m not insane. Just kidding. Bartel’s weblog, IceBlog!, a journal of her work way the hell down there, complete with outstanding photography, is fascinating.

How many bloggers can say they have linked to a blog written in Swedish? Visit I Dåligt Sällskap, just for the helluvit.

Roger Ailes -- No, not that one! The other one! -- of Roger Ailes, Over and Out, is definitely the kind of guy you would want to have a couple of drinks with. At least I would. But he’s never asked.

The proprietor of Seeing the Forest is writing about events in Venezuela and making me feel really guilty about not keeping up on all that. I hope he sticks with the subject.

Does the physically and developmentally stunted weblogger Mickey Kaus really believe that Atrios of Eschaton is Sidney Blumenthal?

As Andrew Sullivan would say, I am, at that, “RAOTFLMAO,” an acronym that Sullivan helpfully informed his dopey readers means, “Rolling around on the floor laughing my ass off.”

As I have mentioned on this site before, I have had the pleasure of enjoying the company of Atrios and the brilliant, talented, and lovely Mrs. Atrios for a dinner engagement, and I can assure the diminutive, balding, and unfurrowed Mickey Kaus that Atrios is definitely not Sidney Blumenthal.

How shocking it must be to realize that a man with a full-time job and career aside from his weblog -- i.e., Atrios -- has done so much to outshine the purported “professionals” of our punditocracy.

Try again, Mickster.

[Post-publication addendum: And now I learn from Hesiod of Counterspin Central that Professor InstaLinker thinks Atrios is really Robert Shrum. And Matthew Yglesias shares the delusion. RAOTFLMAO. These guys just don’t get it, do they?

On the other hand, Chris Andersen of Interesting Times does, in fact, get it.]

Jeanne D’Arc of Body & Soul on race, politics, and Billie Holliday in “Lady Sings The Dixiecrat Double Entendre Blues.” Outstanding.

John Nichols on why the Democratic Party leadership fears -- and mocks -- Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) in the December 6 issue of In These Times, “Saving the Democrats from Themselves.”

John Nichols (again) on the risks associated with “biofarming,” which isn’t at all what I thought it was, in the December 30 issue of The Nation (posted December 12), “The Three Mile Island of Biotech?”

David Yaseen of A Level Gaze on the phony argument about the rich paying too much in taxes that lately has reared its ugly head in “Rising tax burden on the rich? What about tax benefits?”

Tom Leonard on whether Leonardo DaVinci was a Renaissance Peacenik in the December 14 edition of The Age (Melbourne), “Da Vinci War Machines ‘Designed to Fail’.”

Ann Rostow at PlanetOut with a too-brief look at how justice is meted out in the home state of wannabe Senate Majority Leader Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) in “Oklahoma Executes Gay Man; Appeals Fail.”

By way of Coherence Theory of Truth today I read The Beast’s 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2002.

Two of my favorite loathsome write-ups are those for #10, Ashleigh Banfield, and #13, Sean Hannity, but these two, reprinted below, are just a fraction of what The Beast has to offer.

10. ASHLEIGH BANFIELD

Misdeeds: Uses glasses to upgrade her image from WASP-y soccer mom to WASP-y soccer mom who reads. Thought dying her hair black would make her a real journalist. Cried on camera while reporting from Ground Zero.

Aggravating Factor: Has quite possibly the whitest name you can imagine. Her name is the equivalent of a black person named La’ Shawna Jackson-Watkins.

Aesthetic: Co-chair of the Elk Woods Country Club charity golf tournament.

13. SEAN HANNITY

Misdeeds: Without question one of the most smarmy, vile, hypocritical talking heads on television. Has the uncanny ability to vilify and generalize those who disagree with him, and then state that he’s not a partisan person. Exploits his devout Catholicism and patriotism to the point that it makes you think he’s selling something—like his book, whose cover features his giant head in front of one of the glossiest, waviest American flags ever. Much of his wrath can probably be traced to his displeasure that Reagan still can’t remember his name although he’s met him many times.

Aggravating Factor: Since 9/11, pretends to be genuinely convinced that anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration does not want America to be safe. [Ed.: Pretends?]

Aesthetic: Repressed kid from Long Island who got to college, was scared of sex, discovered other repressed white kids in conservative student group, joined them, devoted rest of life to blasting people who didn’t.

I’m not going to tell you who’s #1, the person identified as the single most loathsome person in America. I’ll just say it’s a title that is well deserved.

If the words spoken by retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) back in 1948, the same words endorsed last week by Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), don’t scare the behoosis out of you when you see them in print, take a quick walk over to Mikhaela’s News Blog for a link that will enable you to hear just how enthusiastically Sen. Thurmond spoke when he made those explicitly racist remarks.

Hey, guess what? You know that crazy project that convicted criminal John Poindexter is working on somewhere in the Pentagon, probably near the dumpsters and stuff? Yeah, the “Information Awareness Office.”

Well then you know that the IAO, as I suppose they’re already calling it, plans to track everything you and everyone else in the country buys, signs up or registers for, sends or receives e-mails to and from, blog, blog, blog. It’s all part of the war on terror.

What you may not know is that there is one thing the IAO won’t do and one specific piece of data in which the IAO is not interested, namely, anything that pertains to any firearms you’ve purchased. For the “No duh” on this, nonetheless wisely noted, visit Natasha’s The Watch.

Martin Wisse, who justifiably cannot help himself from correcting my faulty Dutch grammar, is doing an excellent job with the still quite new site, Progressive Gold. It’s a great place to find the best of the center-to-left blogs every day.

As the otherwise human right-winger Jay Caruso of the Daily Rant would say, “Just go check it out.”

As duly noted by several bloggers, Ted Barlow of Ted Barlow is back, and he’s tanned, rested, and ready, as they say. Don’t miss it. Him. The blog. Ted Barlow. (My lesson from Barlow’s return: I’m taking a longer break next time.)

Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World hits what he calls, quite rightly, “the special Eli Lilly Payback Provision” of the Homeland Security Act.

Berkeley Student: “But Professor DeLong, they said there would be no math.”

Professor Brad DeLong: “Um, this is an economics class.”

Berkeley Student: “I know, but my adviser said there would be no math.”

[Post-publication addendum: Looks like I need to pull out an old civics book or something. A smart reader wrote in to correct me on the order of presidential succession, a line in which I incorrectly placed Sen. Lott were he to become Senate majority leader. That error in the original posted has been corrected.]

In the spring, when the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the appeal of Lawrence v. Texas (in re sodomy), we would all do well to remember this remark by Justice Antonin Scalia, made yesterday while the court was hearing arguments in Virginia v. Black (in re cross-burning):

“Surely one can burn a cross in the sanctity of one’s bedroom.”

Oh, I get it. Cross-burning in the sanctity, or privacy, of one’s bedroom is allowed, protected even, but all that other stuff, well, you can forget about it.

And a word to the wise: If you ever find yourself a guest of Justice and Mrs. Scalia and you accept their invitation to stay overnight, ignore the smoke alarm. It’s really nothing.

Here’s a tip from the Greek half of the dynamic duo that puts out a new little leaflet in Washington known as the American Conservative, Taki Theodoracopulos: If you dress up a joke as anti-Zionism, they’ll probably overlook the anti-Semitism. They may groan, but you’re pretty likely to be invited back again next year.

And I had to go to Lloyd Grove’s column to find this? Where’s the outrage?

Andrew Sullivan, please call your office.

(Actually, I found this by way of the increasingly indispensable Roger Ailes. No, not the creepy Republican one. The other one.)

[Post-publication addendum: Tapped took note of Taki’s little stand-up routine yesterday. That’s what I get for putting off the penitential rite of reading Grove on the day he’s published.]

National Post (Toronto) and Telegraph (London) columnist, New Criterion theater critic, and quintessential Media Beta Girl Mark Steyn today was given space on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal to expound upon two of the greatest concerns of the American people today, or at least of Americans, among others, in the media who curry favor with the likes of Matt Drudge and Mickey Kaus.

One only need glance at the title of Steyn’s essay -- “Lather, Rinse, Repeat” -- to know where this sorry exercise, this pathetic excuse for informed opinion, is headed.

Naturally, the topics of discussion are the price Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) pays for his haircuts, the latest (demonstrably false) “scoop” of would-be journalist Drudge, and the senator’s now notorious “furrowed brow,” one of the more recent obsessions of the diminutive right-wing pundit Kaus.

The word according to Steyn:

John Kerry’s hairdresser continues to make waves in Washington. The news that the Massachusetts senator . . . gets a $75 coiffure from Cristophe’s has riveted the Beltway and distracted from his message. . . . To be honest, it’s not entirely obvious where the 75 bucks goes. I mean, I haven’t seen the back of his head in awhile, so it’s possible he has an attractively angled nape. Otherwise, the most likely explanation is that it’s 15 bucks for the stuff on top but he pays $30 per eyebrow for some Ann Miller industrial-strength lacquer that freezes them into that permanently furrowed look.

Interesting, isn’t it, the way Steyn covers up Drudge’s false assertion that Sen. Kerry pays $150 for a haircut? This as if by some miracle of textual transposition it wasn’t a $150 haircut that “riveted the Beltway” -- and, I assure you, nowhere else -- but a still heinous and character-challenging $75 haircut.

Regardless, more than 10 days after the haircut scandal emerged at the factually challenged Drudge Report and roughly the same period of time after weblogger Kaus cast aspersions on Sen. Kerry for the lines on his forehead, Beta Girl Mark Steyn continues to feel compelled to weigh in with his worthless fulminations on the same subjects.

Gee whiz, Steyn, get with the program! According to the media’s Alpha Girls, those whose lead you are all too transparently following, that Kerry stuff about haircuts and wrinkles is, like, sooo last week!

Interesting, also, that Steyn -- whose visage suggests a man lacking familiarity with basic grooming implements, including combs and beard trimmers -- doesn’t share the details of his own visits to the salon with Journal readers. He does, however, drop a hint. “I always enjoy the bit at the end of the haircut where the stylist holds up the hand mirror so you can see the back and sides,” Steyn writes.

Note, “the stylist.”

Not “the barber”?

Given that Steyn reviews musicals on Hilton Kramer’s homophobic dime, one would think he might at least try to butch it up a bit.

And then, out-Steyning even Mark Steyn, Steyn concludes his piece with a lie, a proved-beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt lie, in fact, by writing, in a context that is not worthy of your time or consideration: “If we’d spent more on light rail infrastructure, it wouldn’t matter if a president shut down LAX traffic control so he could get a $200 haircut on the runway, because everybody else would be on the 4:07 to Buffalo via Phoenix, Grand Forks, Oklahoma City and Duluth.”

The reference here is to former President Bill Clinton, a man about whom the media and its right-wing friends clucked and chuckled for years because in 1993 he purportedly held up air traffic on the West Coast and beyond so that he could get his locks trimmed for two “c” notes.

The problem with this little yarn is that it’s simply not true.

The problem with Steyn is that he continues to believe this story is true -- or wishes desperately that it were -- or that he couldn’t care less.

And the problem with The Wall Street Journal is that Paul Gigot & Co. are so unconcerned with facts, so ideologically driven, that they would let this lie go to print nearly 10 years after it was proved false.

On John Snow, to be nominated secretary of the Treasury: “assistant general counsel, U.S. Department of Transportation, 1972-73; . . . deputy assistant secretary for policy, plans and international affairs, DOT, 1973-74; assistant secretary for governmental affairs, DOT, 1974-75; deputy undersecretary, DOT, 1975-76; administrator, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 1976-77.”

On William H. Donaldson, to be nominated chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission: “a wealthy and powerful Wall Street executive who served in the administrations of Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford.”

Cruising Midland, Texas

This may not be your father’s Oldsmobile, but each day the Bush presidency looks more and more like your father’s administration. Or someone’s father, anyway.

It’s a shame when bad things happen to good people, though I understand Harold S. Kushner has built a cottage industry around helping the woeful make the most of such misfortune. (“Making lemons out of lemonade,” as my friend Mike Signorile once put it.)

And it’s a good thing, at least in my opinion, when bad things happen to bad people.

But what’s even better is when good things happen to good people, and such is the case today.

Humorist, blogger, oboist, attorney, and insomniac Mad Kane, whose driver’s license more likely reads Madeleine Begun Kane, has been nominated for two -- not one, but two -- of About.com’s 2002 Political Dot-Comedy Awards:

Best Parodies (Ongoing Achievement) for her site, Mad Kane’s Political Humor; and

Best Bush Humor for yet another of her sites, Dubya’s Dayly Diary.

As the incomparable Ms. Mad Kane herself notes (Ever notice that almost no one could ever say Peggy Lee’s [Dead!] name without prefacing the appellation with the words, “the incomparable Miss,” as in, “The incomparable Miss Peggy Lee”?), the competition is fierce, and while Kane humbly professes not to expect to win, we all know it’s much more fun to show up at Morton’s with a statue than without one.

Visit her sites first if you feel you need to, but join the fun and do what the rest of the kool kids are doing: Voting for Mad Kane! (<===Click there to vote.)

And you know what? A win, even a decent showing, might help make up for all the times Mad’s mother, with a heavy sigh, introduced guests to her miniature poodle as “my only grandchild.”

I can’t help but wonder what, if anything, is going through the minds of the likes of Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) today, that in light of the latest, and only the latest, evidence of the poorly disguised racism that is one of the defining characteristics of soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

In the event that Sen. Lott declines to resign or even to apologize for having heaped praise upon the 50-year-old, thoroughly discredited, and unconscionably heinous agenda of the 100-year-old, quasi-corpse known as Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the refusal of Sens. Chafee, McCain, Snowe, and Specter to abandon the oh-so-cleverly-subtle racist enterprise that is today’s Republican Party will speak volumes, not only about American politics today, but about political power generally and the morality and character of these particular senators.

In this country only a very select few -- 100 men and women at one time -- occupy the lofty, prestigious, and powerful post of U.S. Senator. We as a polity are right and just in holding these 100 persons to the highest of ethical standards.

And so, if, in the face of such disgraceful conduct by their own elected leader, these Republican senators, these otherwise reasonable men and women, again, namely, Sens. Chafee, McCain, Snowe, and Specter, and whoever else might choose to surprise us -- Sen. Ben Campbell (R-Colo.), perhaps? Ha ha ha! -- decide to stand by and stand behind the despicable white supremacist known as “Trent Lott,” then the hell with all of them. I’d rather not have them join the party and in such case I hope we will hear none of such “party-switching” nonsense again.

[Post-publication update, December 12: Today’s New York Times quotes Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) on the subject of Sen. Lott’s trip down memory lane: “His comment was an inadvertent slip, and his apology should end the discussion.”]

Ahead of the “celebration” marking the 100th anniversary of the appearance in flesh, blood, and bones of that which has become known as Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the conservative weekly Human Events shared with its readers an interview with the “patriot, veteran, and statesman” conducted by John Gizzi. [Note: Their words, not mine.]

The interview with “Ol’ Strom” was conducted in 1996. You have to go back six years to find a walking, talking Thurmond. More nostalgia, I guess. It’s always nostalgia with these people.

Anyway, here’s a choice quote from the vaporizing senator from South Carolina:

When I ran for President on the States’ Rights Party ticket in `48, it was not a segregationist campaign. It was about just that: the rights of states against the power of the federal government. We carried four states [South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi], but President Truman never forgave me. When I went to his inauguration . . . he and Vice President Alben Barkley drove by in an open car and my wife and I waved. Barkley started to wave back, but Truman grabbed his arm and said “Don’t wave at that [expletive deleted].”

He did some good things, I suppose, like dropping that bomb to end the war. But he was also a very small man toward those who disagreed with him, like Gen. MacArthur and me.

And here’s Gizzi of Human Events putting it all in perspective for us:

Because of his “Dixiecrat” race for President in 1948 and his steadfast opposition to civil rights legislation that included speaking for 24 hours and 18 minutes on the Senate floor (the record for filibusters) in opposition to the 1957 Civil Rights Act, it has been easy for the national media to characterize Thurmond as a racist. In truth, just like more liberal Southern senators such as J. William Fulbright (D.-Ark) and John Sparkman (D.-Ala), Thurmond did defend the segregationist practices of Southern states against what he deemed “a new kind of police state centered in Washington.” But he was not a hater of the Bilbo stripe and, while governor from 1946-50, successfully sought the abolition of the poll tax and more funds for black, albeit segregated, schools.

I have to say that I can’t help but wonder why anyone thinks, would think, or thought, that “Good King Wenceslaus” is, was, ever would have been, or even would be considered, a Christmas carol.

It’s not.

[Post-publication addendum (December 9): To the many readers who have written, yes, I know arguments can be made on both sides of this. If I were feeling better, I would expand upon my position, but, in truth, I’m really just yanking Skippy’s chain and whatever that is that’s barking beside him on this subject.]

Peggy Noonan -- “The loons! The loons!” -- today once again demonstrates her supernatural talents, this time reading the mind of the man on the street, or, more accurately, a man in the candy store:

Mayor Mike Bloomberg had just come on to do a live news conference. They had the TV on in the candy store to get updates on the weather. Mr. Bloomberg announced this was “the first big test” of his administration. The guy next to me caught my eye; we smiled and thought: Thanks for the context--we thought this was about the storm. We forgot it’s about you! It wasn’t obnoxious, just comic, a pure moment of the inevitable solipsism of a modern mayor in the media age.

Impressive as this sounds, I’m afraid Noonan got it wrong. You see, I happen to know the Brooklyn man with whom Noonan exchanged her knowing glances, and at that particular moment, the man in the candy store tells me, he was thinking:

Oh, God, there’s that nut Peggy Noonan. The one with the dolphins. She even looks crazy. Why is she staring at me? Maybe if I just smile and turn away she won’t try to start a conversation. She’s freaking me out. Man, I gotta’ get out of here!

Oh, and a quick walk through Brooklyn Heights with a tape measure (“seven feet tall and 40 inches wide”), perhaps a map (look for the church with a statue of Our Lady of Fatima in front -- my bet is on Our Lady of Lebanon, on Remsen St.), and five bucks for an enterprising neighborhood kid ought to take care of that window of hers pretty quickly. At least it would in the New York I used to know.

Why is it that Howard Kurtz, Washington Post “media critic,” is paid, what, $200,000 a year, to yammer on and on for hundreds of words only to reveal his complete and utter cluelessness about politics and the media -- about anything, really -- while a “mere” blogger, namely Avedon Carol, who while an American, doesn’t even live in this country, can write, offhandedly and as part of her sideline activities, and from the other side of the Atlantic -- Britain -- no less, four sentences that more accurately and concisely portray the pathetic and deteriorating state of the “prestige” media in the U.S. today, and do so in a manner and with a flourish that puts to shame any of the random, nonsensical thoughts that might, just might, happen to pass through the pea brain of the man known to his protective buddies as “Howie,” but to those in the know as The Next Mrs. Rush Limbaugh?

Here is Carol writing, as it happens, primarily about her “hometown” paper, one she knows well, the aforementioned and perpetually declining Washington Post, though in context she clearly is referring to every leading print outlet in the U.S., the four sentences that say all too much about all too little:

[I]t just feels like such a waste of time to try to read stories by journalists who are really just reporting on what’s going on inside their own heads. Fair enough for me to do it on my own weblog, but no one’s paying me for this. But in The Newspapers of Record? It’s like a horrible joke, except that it’s not funny.

Ringing any bells, Alpha Girls?

I thought I would save anyone so inclined the trouble of a little investigative reporting -- “A little what?”, the leading lights of our nation’s media cry out in unison -- and inform you of my own volition that I normally pay $40, plus tips, for a haircut, and I do so every three weeks.

And also, for the record, I have a furrowed brow, a deeply and perpetually furrowed brow, and a brow that has been furrowed -- and thoroughly unfurrowable -- for nearly twenty years.

I assert it is and always has been genuinely furrowed. And since I am some twenty years younger than the similarly encumbered Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), a man whose furrowed brow I had not noticed until it was brought to a shocked and disgusted nation’s attention on Sunday, I now wonder whether I am experiencing the repulsive and shameful condition known as “premature furrowed brow.”

In my defense, I believe I inherited my furrowed brow from my father. However, I have not read any studies proving a genetic link to or predisposition toward furrowed brows, as until this week I regarded furrowed brows, including mine, my father’s, and those of countless others, as mere facial traits and not evidence of character flaws, this an ignorant oversight for which I sincerely apologize.

My assertion of the authenticity of my brow’s furrows aside, I will, in preparation for a possible run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, graciously allow second third-rate blogging hack Mickey Kaus to issue the definitive verdict to a waiting nation.

Brows, especially the furrowed kind, and even more so furrowed brows of the “phony” type, apparently are of great importance to Kaus, who, for the record, is balding and has a suspiciously shiny forehead and an unusually small skull.

Thank you for your attention. We may all now return to the critical issues facing this country: former President Bill Clinton’s birthmarks, former Vice President Al Gore’s facial hair, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s jewelry.

Modesty, ahem, prevents me from regularly drawing readers’ attention to |||trr|||, my other weblog, known offhandedly as “The Lighter Side of The Rittenhouse Review,” as if there were any other.

Lately, however, I have been spending more time working on the site, for too long my overlooked stepchild. If you care to, stop by |||trr||| for a quick look at the recent posts there, including: “100 Things I’ve Never Done,” “Despair in the Streets of La Páz,” “Misguided Mass Mailings,” “Warm Summer + Early Snowfall = Drunken Moose,” “A New Definition of Joy,” “And You Laughed at Me?,” “Five Gastronomic Disasters That Explain Why I Will Never Understand the South,” “Making -- and Paddling -- Butter,” “The Ingredients May Surprise You,” “I Really Need to Cook More,” “Whoops! Wrong Number!” and “Life and Death and Bonsai.”

And in the continuing series, “Philadelphia: Love It or Hate It (The Best and Worst of the City of Brotherly Love Arranged in Thoroughly Random and Unrelated Pairings)”: Longwood Gardens and the Subway System; Easy Shopping and Missing Street Signs; The PSFS Building and Litter; and Quaint Alleys and Places That Don’t Deliver.

Enjoy.

Or hate.

I don’t really care.