(Sneak peek: Chatter editor letter for July) My son believes he is God’s gift to me in the kitchen. He pours the cheese powder for macaroni. He stirs the ground beef for spaghetti sauce. He carries his plate to the table. These tasks are his birthright. Before he came into the world, these tasks were…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, June 2011) I read in a (very classy) tabloid how Matthew McConaughey admits when he visits a buffet that he loses all sense of physical restraint and consumes as much food as his gorgeous digestive tract can handle. (I don’t think HE thinks his digestive tract is gorgeous, but let’s…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, May 2011) But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:5 Prince William and Catherine Middleton just got married, by the way. Just in case you have been…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, April 2011) You know you are getting old when the local news anchor and your gynecologist look potentially younger than you. Or at least your age. That’s when you start wondering, should I have become a news anchor or gynecologist? The big 3-0 is really not that significant by some…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, March 2011) William George Heirens is reputedly the world’s longest-serving, still-living prisoner, incarcerated in 1946 after confessing to three brutal murders. Known as the Lipstick Killer, Heirens is currently incarcerated at the Dixon Correctional Center in Dixon, Illinois, but has since recanted his confession. He is 82 years old. Before…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, February 2011) Well hello there. This is Julie Rhodes. I’ve been on maternity leave for the past few months and am just now emerging from the fascinating underwater world of progesterone, where bright pink anemones of emotion and coral reefs of anxiety dance in the current. Actually, I haven’t really…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, August 2010) Today we began reading our two-year-old potty-training propaganda. This mostly involved shameless plugs from the likes of Elmo about how “Elmo can use the potty!” and how you can do it too and might even get to FLUSH all by yourself and pick out your own big boy…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, July 2010) E=MC2. Perhaps you have heard of this pithy little formula. We all have, of course, but since my left-hand cerebrum has shriveled into a tiny black raisin at this point in my career, I have only just understood what Einstein was describing. He was describing a fat dude…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, June 2010) In the 1995 comedy Grumpy Old Men, we find the elder father “Grandpa” discussing his eating habits with his also-now-elderly son “John.” But before I share it with you, let me tell you why it came to my mind in the first place. The other day at Tom…   read more

(Chatter letter from the editor, May 2010) I would like to talk about grace for a moment. Not cosmic-eternal-salvation grace; but the specific, detailed little (or huge) graces we experience in space and time despite an awful attitude. This kind of grace feels warmest because we receive it in the dirty moments of tracked-in mud,…   read more