Local News
September 11, 2023 · 74 Comments

I found it while researching a murder (…this is a sentence I have more frequent use for than most), the true story of a neighborhood legend from my childhood. I grew up in a leafy, …

Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Stories, True and Otherwise

Who We Were
September 11, 2019 · 142 Comments

Sarahs Bunting past.

I was 28, no greys. I had two cats, one grey. I lived, for a moment, in a loft in Toronto I was subletting from a college friend. The cats have gone. They are also here, in simple cedar boxes that contain the gravel of their bones, because when the time came, I couldn’t bring nothing home. The Little Joe box sits on my desk, near whatever I’m having to drink, because that’s where he’d be, fixing to knock it over. But he’s gone.

The college friend has gone too. A seizure when he was alone; a sharp corner whose danger wasn’t known; a grand procession to the cemetery. I was proud of that, for him. It was something — the kind of something that’s almost nothing, but something nonetheless. Something to keep him here, and every time I see a Molson tap in a pub, here he is again, clanking off the Airporter with a straining duffel for the American minors.

I was on Paxil. Lord, I hope that one’s gone; it didn’t do what it needed to, just shrank down what I felt to a hallway, mild and medium. The sobbing I did eighteen years ago today I had not done for several seasons prior. Church giggles were like a story I’d read. One thing penetrated the white-noisy middleness, the worst possible thing.

What the Paxil tried to treat is still here. I have anxiety disorder. I always have had it. It changes, that beast, it evolves: hammering visible heartbeats, waves of despair, compulsions about foods and routes and lucky broken tchotchkes taken around everywhere, agoraphobia. Terror, and the war on it, every day retaking the same ground. The enemy never tires. At last, and by accident, I found the right meds, and the spirals still happen, but now they have an end. But they wait here for me.

I used to come to Tomato Nation every day. I approved comments and made updates. I gave advice, and I wish I hadn’t given some of it. Today, a year’s gone by. In the lead graphic, my grandfather’s eyes still regard us. I miss those days sometimes, three or four apartments ago, different desks and coffee, the wind in different trees, dropping a different bag on the ground all “How was the day?” But on Tomato Nation, those days can still be now, even though they’re gone. We can still be here together, not the same way, just the same way, with our old selves.

Isn’t that the anguishing gift of life — that what’s gone can yet remain? Hilly, my uncle, Dr. Ellen’s t-shirt-cannon strings of emojis leaving her ghost signature on my Instagram, my aunt who married us…my grandma who I watched Charles and Diana get married with by phone back when that could cost a fortune (and did; sorry again, Dad), whose pen cup I’m looking at, whose gaudiest costume ring I have on today, who taught me geranium husbandry and old songs and what “favorite” could mean. What a big space to leave and still be everywhere.

People use that Faulkner line about the past sometimes like it’s a bad thing, like we can’t escape, and sometimes that’s the truth of it. Other times, it’s nice to leave a space beside me for what’s gone, for who I was and who was with me then.

And for a slice of cake with confetti frosting. Happy birthday, Don.

Holding The Line
September 10, 2018 · 90 Comments
Holding The Line

Last of a dying breed.

The Vine: June 19, 2018
June 19, 2018 · 15 Comments
The Vine: June 19, 2018

I had to give up my absolute favorite purse I have ever had.

Order Of The Shallows: French Open 2018
June 4, 2018 · 3 Comments
Order Of The Shallows: French Open 2018

Mais oui, we’re back at Roland Garros!

Order Of The Shallows: The 22s Of MLB
May 22, 2018 · 2 Comments
Order Of The Shallows: The 22s Of MLB

Ranking the major-league gents wearing the double deuce.

Met-lediction: Is There A Curse Of Flushing?
April 13, 2018 · No Comment
Met-lediction: Is There A Curse Of Flushing?

Listen to my presentation from the 2018 Baseball In Literature And Culture conference!

MASTAS 91: Ranking The 91st Oscars’ Best Song Nominees
February 28, 2018 · No Comment
MASTAS 91: Ranking The 91st Oscars’ Best Song Nominees

Joe Reid joins Mark and Sarah for a ranking — and handicapping — of this year’s Best Song candidates.

Order Of The Shallows: Australian Open 2018
January 22, 2018 · 2 Comments
Order Of The Shallows: Australian Open 2018

New year, new rankings…new blood on the panel!

The Poppy-Fields Movie Couch Of Fame: Star Wars: A New Hope
December 15, 2017 · 11 Comments
The Poppy-Fields Movie Couch Of Fame: <em>Star Wars: A New Hope</em>

Stay on target…stay on target…

Poppy-Fields Movies: The Couch Of Fame
November 9, 2017 · 108 Comments
Poppy-Fields Movies: The Couch Of Fame

6/5/17: Your objection to The Firm not being on the PFM Couch Of Fame…is sustained!