Word abuse is a disturbing consequence of instant universal communication (them Interwebs) – icky in that it takes what should be genuine and makes it, well, weird. “Like” has now become a grade applied to other words. “Unlike” is now a word (what happened to dislike?). “Message” and “Text” are now verbs… But the worst […]
Archives for July 2012
Episode 52: Redefining Friendship
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about which chapters to include in this “guide to modern living”, and one of the obvious choices is – and always has been – a chapter on ‘Relationships’. With this in mind, I convened our weekly brainstorming session at Zinc Restaurant on Chapel Street in New Haven. (Thanks to […]
Bob Tedeschi: Managing Noise
In Episode 51 of the Real Life Survival Guide, my fellow panelist Christine Ohlman put her finger on an increasingly troublesome self-care issue: managing noise. We watch screens all day long; they scream at us with work tasks, spam, legitimate e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, news, sports, gossip. Our society essentially demands it. Long ago the U.S. […]
Mary Elliott: Naked and New – Re-thinking What We Deserve
Like any other Catholic baby, I was born with the proverbial millstone around my neck—the burden of Original Sin—but baptized and therefore saved in the chapel of the U.S.S. Vulcan, a naval ship docked in the Norfolk shipyards. It was a regular, low-key baptism documented with Polaroid photos—no champagne bottle cracked over my head just […]
Episode 51 – Leaving Lardville
After a short hiatus, Bruce Barber’s movable feast is back. For the first chapter of the next generation of the Real Life Survival Guide, Bruce, Duo and their band of merry guest editors sat down at Barcelona Wine bar and Restaurant in New Haven to discuss living a healthy life. Bruce dubbed Chapter 1, “Self […]
“Really?” aka, The Real Life Survival Guide Producer’s Blog
“So, if you’re writing a ‘guide’, will I ever be able to read it?” asks my husband. ”Do you intend to create a ‘manual for modern living’—on the web, as a book, or as anything else”? Leave it to my DH to pose the most obvious questions about the RLSG’s quest to identify, “life’s little […]
Episode 51: Self Care
Welcome to a new phase in the development of The Real Life Survival Guide, as we focus our efforts on brainstorming ideas for the Guide around a single theme or “chapter“. For our 51st session we gathered at the amazing Barcelona Restaurant and Wine Bar in New Haven – to talk about the chapter on “Self Care”. Our guest editors […]
The Next Chapter
Way Back in May The Real Life Survival Guide turned 50, that’s fifty episodes of advice, humor, wisdom, complaints, conundrums, questions, answers, delicious food and a little bit O’ the hootch for good measure. The show is now an adult. It has matured. Even though it has reached this impressive milestone no one comes to […]
Mary Elliott: S.O.S. from Camp Yawgoog
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah, Hello Real Life Survivahs, S.O.S. from Camp Yawgoog! Thanks to an unexpected twist of fate (my husband’s back twisted when he lifted an old lawnmower into our minivan)—I’ve been banished here to the Rhode Island wilderness to camp out with my son’s boy-scout troop. However, unlike Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, […]