Jane Haddam

I found this article on Arts and Letters Daily yesterday http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/opinion/death-of-a-salesmans-dreams.html?_r=1 and I put it up here because it represents the first time I have ever seen anybody talk about–in print–something that has been bothering me for a while. I’m not screamingly fond of this article for a number of reasons.  Most of all, I…

There’s something you have to know about me.  I am no good in an emergency. Or, rather, I am, as long as there is an emergency. It’s when the emergency is over that I go to pieces, and I’m completely useless for–well, it depends.  After Bill died, I was completely useless for about a year,…

Okay. Here is a piece of history a friend of mine reminded me of this morning. Practically everybody who is reading this will know that there was an epidemic of plague in the Middle Ages that wiped out a considerable portion of the population. Some of you will  know that there were also, in the…

I did not make that name up, although I sort of wish I had.  It’s a wonderful name.  It ought to be the name of a major-secondary character in a fair play mystery set in a small midwestern town.  It ought to be something. And, in fact, it is something.  It’s the name of a…

There’s a blog title for you. Before I start, though, I’d like to point out something that is obvious in itself:  listening to Beethoven’s 9th first thing in the morning will really wake you up. Anyway, having done that and drunk enough long-steeped tea to turn me into a little buzzing center of nervous energy,…

I did a serious blog post below. But this showed up on RealClearPolitics this morning http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/margaret-wente/is-anybody-normal-any-more/article2423352/ and since it’s one of my hobbyhorses, I’ve posted the link. I will admit I disagree with the thing about them being “well meaning” and “not corrupt”– But hey. I’m a cynic.

So it’s the end of the term, and I’ve been sitting around trying to get my correcting down and my grades done.  Contrary to any impression I may have given, I am not more cultured than Judy.  It’s just that I think of alcohol as something you do after you’ve corrected the papers.  I think…

I should have a nice long time today to write a blog post, but as it turns out I’m dying under a pile of student papers, and I don’t.  The simple truth of the matter is that the less skilled your students are, the more work it takes to correct their papers.  Their high school…

Something happened that is probably my fault. I didn’t mean to give the impression that Brad Gregory, the author of The Unintended Reformation, was naive and nostalgic about the Middle Ages. He isn’t, and wasn’t–he seems to have a pretty good grip on the fact that the actual practice of Christians in the Middle Ages…

I’ve been holding off starting this post until I could finish the book I’ve been reading, but right now I’ve got about six pages to go, and I can probably make some preliminary observations. And some observations are in order, really, because this is, in some ways, a very strange book. It’s called The Unintended…