• Does Your Christmas Need Some Krampus?

    Mine did, but I didn’t know it! Not until I took a shortcut through a little neighborhood trying to avoid shopping traffic last weekend and saw this: Do you see it? One of these things is not like the others, right? What? The? Holy? Fuck?! It has plastic hands but that is fur of some kind. I took a friend by the next day in the rain and it looked even crazier when it was soaked. It reminds me of Ethan’s books on extinct Ice Age animals, so I’ve been calling it a sloth. But my friend Gina was like, “That’s a Krampus!” Neither is quite right. I’m just going…

  • Thanksgiving Crafting

    Growing up, Thanksgiving was spent with my large extended family and, while food was the main event, football was also central. If my uncles didn’t get into a fight about something (it’s not just drinking families that argue; Mormons do it, too), like which of them loved Ronald Reagan the most, then they would hunker down around TV and the children (and there were oodles of us) needed to stay quiet. If not quiet, then in the basement. Preferably both. One year we did a craft around the kitchen table while the menfolk watched football and talked politics. And I loved it! I couldn’t figure out while we weren’t doing…