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!

The Vine: September 30, 2011
September 30, 2011 · 9 Comments
The Vine: September 30, 2011

My brother and I had a toy when we were younger. It was very high-tech (for the time) and was a plastic, working headset. It came with various cartridge and book sets. The cartridge plugged …

Heart Attacks
September 29, 2011 · 32 Comments
Heart Attacks

Wow. WOW.
I feel bad for Braves and Sox fans, I do. God knows I understand what it’s like to watch a team floundering (although, when you give up hope of contending in, like, the 1800s, …

The Vine: September 28, 2011
September 28, 2011 · 38 Comments
The Vine: September 28, 2011

I need to leave my job. I’m nearing 40, have no retirement account or savings, and more than $15,000 in credit card debt. I graduated college 16 years ago with a B.A. in English Literature …

Beautiful Fools
September 27, 2011 · 27 Comments
Beautiful Fools

By the time I turned twenty, I had come to despise Zelda Fitzgerald. It was no fault of hers. I knew nothing about her, really, except that she had married F. Scott and lost her …

TN Read-Along #12: Gunn’s Golden Rules
September 27, 2011 · 12 Comments
TN Read-Along #12: <I>Gunn’s Golden Rules</I>

I’m pretty excited to say that our next read-along tome is Gunn’s Golden Rules: Life’s Little Lessons for Making It Work. I think it’s available in every possible edition; let’s read and discuss starting Thursday …

The Vine: September 23, 2011
September 23, 2011 · 9 Comments
The Vine: September 23, 2011

I’ve tried Google and asked my Facebook friends: one suggested I try Tomato Nation. The work I am trying to find was written in German, and is something between a short essay and a vignette. …

The Vine: September 21, 2011
September 21, 2011 · 36 Comments
The Vine: September 21, 2011

I broke up with my boyfriend of about 5 months a little while ago. We had met on a blind date set up by an acquaintance, so we were pretty much starting from scratch. The …

The Vine: September 16, 2011
September 16, 2011 · 28 Comments
The Vine: September 16, 2011

I’m hoping The Nation can help me find a book.  When I was in late grade school, which would have been in the early 1980s, I had the reading skills to read fairly advanced chapter …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #12: Poll
September 15, 2011 · 7 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #12: Poll

Gunn and Grann return for another shot at group-reading glory, along with Scientologists, my baseball grandpa, and “incon-thee-vable!”‘s brother. Pick us a good one! Poll’s open until next week.

Save The Day Shirt Sale!
September 15, 2011 · 4 Comments
Save The Day Shirt Sale!

Save The Day shirts — now on sale! If you wanted one in the springtime but didn’t win one, or didn’t know they even existed and now want to fly the contest colors, or whatever, …