Some things I learned about myself during the recent snowpocalypse: 1. I do not favor terms like “snowpocalypse.” 2. I do not favor snow. It makes me mad. 3. Conveniently, I also do not get cabin fever.

The first two items on that list are hardly shocking to anyone who knows me, even only peripherally. The last one, however, is a little surprising. I’m a social creature. I talk to people everywhere I go. And not just people I know. I will—and often do—chat up total strangers.…

A kitchen garden is as much an act of self-expression as a means of growing food. But not all of a garden’s expressiveness is intentional. In the same way that pets and their owners can grow to resemble one another, gardens can reflect their gardeners’ personality, including how fastidious, lazy or greedy they are.

It would be a stretch to accuse me of being overly tidy, and the same can be said for my garden. But lazy and greedy? Guilty as charged. And when I allow these tendencies to…

True story: In the 1990s, a British guy named Steve Pateman did some heavy duty sole searching and soon thereafter worked to save his family-run shoe factory from demise by deciding to produce fetish footwear for men. On the path to trying to save his business, the formerly strait-laced boss had to learn to shave his legs and walk in six-inch stiletto heels.

It’s also correct that a short BBC2 documentary about Pateman’s “Divine Footwear” inspired the 2005 film Kinky Boots,…

When you plant a garden, you join a springtime revolution against the agricultural industrial complex. Snapdragons, foxglove and lavender support much-needed pollinators like honeybees. Heirloom vegetables defend the biodiversity of our food system. And when you impress your friends with the meal you grew yourself, you revitalize a sense of community around wholesome food.

But the heart and soul of any decent rebellion, peaceful or otherwise, resides underground. In this case, that…

Each spring, I’m amazed anew at the sheer amount of green things budding on limbs and poking out of the thawing soil in my front and backyard.

I’m vaguely referring to the miracle of nature and the cyclical joy the eventual warming of the seasons brings, but a large part of the wonder is that I don’t remember planting even half of what’s in the ground and am agog that what is growing often turns out to be aesthetically appealing.

I may have a couple of forgetful green thumbs, but…

Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, a leader in the American Indian Movement (AIM) who cultivated a rag-tag gang of activist children—including her daughter Marcy—into a group called the “We Will Remember” survival group. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother and daughter.

Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both women are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the…

Oscar is having a tough year.

It would seem the road to Hollywood’s heavy metal is paved with poor decisions and murky intentions on the part of the possibly still esteemed Academy. First, was that thing with the proposed and then rescinded Best Popular Picture category, which was followed by proposed host Kevin Hart rescinding himself after firestorm of controversy about his past tweets—resulting in the first host-free telecast in three decades. Then, in an effort to shorten the…