The globalization of Mother’s and Father’s Day

I bought Father’s Day cards for the first time in my life today. It wasn’t a holiday we paid particular attention to when I was growing up. But now commercial Western holidays have made their way through satellite TV all the way to Pakistan to my parents’ living room. Last year in May, I called [...]

Taking a leaf out of Facebook

It’s spawned a thousand stories about old people gatecrashing into a world of young people ever since it opened its registration and doubled its users to 24 million. Fifty-something Emily Yoffe of Slate.com did this piece back on March 8 about not finding any friends her own age on Facebook. “Scrolling around the photos of [...]

Back to those hard-working lovers

If you ever doubted the eternal adaptability of Shakespeare, watch these Vassar students set the Russian dance in Love’s Labor’s Lost to “500 Miles” by Scottish band The Proclaimers. Back in Washington, The Shakespeare Theater Company’s free production of Love’s Labor’s Lost in Rock Creek Park brilliantly illustrated how to make Shakespeare fun and relevant [...]

The story of the crooked rice pudding

In memory of Iftikhar HusainJune 14, 1912 – June 8, 2004 My grandfather, Iftikhar Husain, died three years ago today. I think I will always mourn him. But today, in his memory, I will tell a joke he shared with me a couple of years before he died. He and my grandmother were over at [...]