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!

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Articles in The Vine

The Vine: November 17, 2005
November 17, 2005 – 6:11 PM | No Comment

Dear Sars,
My problem is my mother. We seem to have a love/hate relationship. We have never been close, as she had me when she was 15 and spent my childhood trying to pretend she didn’t …

The Vine: November 16, 2005
November 16, 2005 – 4:43 PM | No Comment

Note: The answer to yesterday’s “you/your visiting” grammar-nundrum is found under “fused participles” in the Garner.I never would have looked there in a billion years.Thanks, AB Chao!

Sars,
I met Joe through a personal ad six weeks …

The Vine: November 15, 2005
November 15, 2005 – 4:22 PM | No Comment

Sars! Queen of grammar!
Which is correct:
“On December 12, 1964, I was…”
or
“On December 12, 1964 I was…”
Please give references to prove the truth to the doubters.
Thanks!
Confused by Commas

Dear Get In Line,
I’ll cite sources in a sec, …

The Vine: November 11, 2005
November 11, 2005 – 8:36 PM | No Comment

Hi Sars,
I need to know if I’m wrong or just being picky.
There seems to be a trend where the word “female” is being used in place of the word “woman,” as in: “I saw the …

The Vine: November 10, 2005
November 10, 2005 – 8:05 PM | No Comment

Hey Sars —
About two years before I met my now-fiance, he purchased a home. To call it a fixer-upper would be an understatement — the house had not been lived in for 10 years …

The Vine: November 9, 2005
November 9, 2005 – 7:49 PM | No Comment

Hi Sars, love your site.I have kind of an odd question for you.Back in the day I grew up on the same block as a Very Famous Author.He, like anyone who has some amount of …

The Vine: November 8, 2005
November 8, 2005 – 7:33 PM | No Comment

“More than” vs. “over.” When would you use one or the other? I tend to use “more than” instead of “over,” e.g., “these sites have more than 1,000 ports” instead of “these sites have over …

The Vine: November 4, 2005
November 4, 2005 – 10:18 PM | No Comment

Hello, Sars!
What’s the deal
with “that that”?For example, “I don’t know that that is a reason to
break up with him.”It looks strange to me and MS Office grammar
check scolds me for repeating a word, but I …

The Vine: November 3, 2005
November 3, 2005 – 3:24 PM | No Comment
The Vine: November 3, 2005

Ooh! Ooh! Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich by William Shirer! I got into it after reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl for the first time a few years back (I …

The Vine: November 2, 2005
November 2, 2005 – 3:06 PM | One Comment

Hi Sars,
My car is in Delaware and I’m moving to
Alaska — I have thousands of miles to cover, and I’m giving myself
about a month to make the trip. No hurry. I know you drove US …