Word: columning
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...told me how lucky I was, how much fun I was sure to have, how much they wished they could come along, and how fortunate I was to be meeting someone who could help me understand them. They were certain that Erma was just like the lady in the column, vacuuming around the house and taping funny lines on the fridge. And if she wasn't, they didn't care, and surely I wouldn't find anything bad to report about someone as wonderful as Erma Bombeck-would I? Their injunctions were further reinforced by my seatmate...
...coyer story, verified McWhirter's observations during his own visit to Bombeck's household. He was amazed, and appalled, by Bombeck's well-hidden efficiency: "She gets up in the morning, goes into her office and functions till 5," he notes. "She works on her column or her play, and they get done when she says they'll be done. That is terribly depressing to someone else trying to write." However, the two of them, each the parent of three children, did achieve instant rapport on the awfulness of adolescence. "She gave me more hope than...
...have a degree in psychology from Michigan State, but as she cleans up after the puppy while trying to separate two children who are fighting over a linty piece of bubble gum, she may not be in the mood for compound-complex sentences. She may smile over a column by Art Buchwald, the master of the discovered absurdity, or one of Russell Baker's elegantly sane demonstrations that the world is crazy. But if she enlists in an army, it is likely to be Bombeck's. Am I really down on the kitchen floor with an old pair...
...Emerson Junior High in Dayton, Bombeck started writing a humor column for a school newspaper called The Owl. Says Bill Bombeck: "The format hasn't changed a lot. You're talking about someone who has been writing a personal column since she was twelve or 13 years old." Bombeck had been fairly offhanded about singing and dancing, but wising off in print was the best thing since soaping windows at Halloween. A couple of years later she was at it again, clowning about shoplifting, clearance sales and the lunch menu for the newsletter of Rike's department...
...crafter is Sara Collins Medina, a staff writer for the past 3½ years. She is assisted by Reporter-Researcher Linda Young. Says Medina: "The process of sifting out an individual's achievements involves assimilating vast amounts of material, then compacting it to the density of poetry. The column also provides the world's most comprehensive education in the creative use of the semicolon...