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Marta Hepler Drahos: Sanity lost in N.Y.
We're on the boarding line at the airport with one carry-on bag each, which we've carefully measured to conform to airline policy. The airline has overbooked and is asking for volunteers to take a later flight, but we don't bite since we're meeting friends in New York. We shuffle to the head of the line, where we're told we can't carry on our carry-ons because the plane is too full. My husband argues.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Hooray for workers
As some of the hardest workers in the world, Americans deserve a day off -- this year, more than ever. Why? Because employees in the United States generally labor more hours and take fewer vacations than their counterparts in other advanced economies. Because 10 percent of full-time workers don't get any paid vacation days. But mostly because, with retirement accounts evaporating faster than jobs these days, many of us will have to toil until we drop.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Less to like on TV
First it was "The Biggest Loser," the NBC fitness-weight loss program that asks obese participants to work out and weigh in wearing revealing bike shorts and sports bras. Then it was "Dance Your Ass Off," Oxygen's dance-weight-loss competition, which features "talented full-figured contestants who struggle with their weight and through dancing unleash their inner thin." Now it's "More to Love," Fox's plus-size version of "The Bachelor" -- or "'Fat'chelor," as some have dubbed it.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Fest is TC tradition
Like a lot of locals, I'm ambivalent about the festival, though I recognize its contribution to the city. I don't skip town to avoid it, but I don't schedule my vacation around it, either. The sad truth is that I don't like cherries, except in pies. I hate crowds and I wilt like a plucked wildflower in temperatures above 80. Yet there's something about festival week that makes my step a little lighter.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Learning to appreciate
When it comes to art, I've always believed that those who can, do; those who can't, collect. The first sign that I was meant to be among the latter came in grade school during a simple art project. It started with a piece of black construction paper and a straw, through which we were supposed to blow a dollop of watery white paint into a free-form design. I blew so hard that I fainted.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: A wedding of errors
We're bumping down the dirt road that leads out of our neighborhood, feeling that rush of freedom and adventure you get at the start of a road trip. I'd raced home after work, flung some things in a bag and set off with my husband for a four-day weekend in St. Louis to attend the wedding of a friend, a former intern at the paper.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Nightmare in Turkey
They were on their way to Pamukkale, site of an ancient city and natural wonder: a miles-wide calcium formation dubbed "cotton castle" for its dazzling white color. The trip was part of a much-needed vacation on the Turkish Riviera, roughly 1,400 miles from their home in Germany. But their perfect getaway turned into a nightmare when the tourist bus in which they were riding overturned on its way to the World Heritage site.
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Marta Hepler-Drahos: March not for romance
Beware the Ides of March, the soothsayer warned Julius Caesar in a Shakespeare play. Caesar didn't listen. And neither did we. Instead we tied the knot on March 15, chiefly so that two of our sisters -- college professors -- could attend our wedding during spring break. Since then, I've come to have other reasons to regret getting married in a season halfway between lion and lamb.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: More banned words
Every year Lake Superior State University releases its "List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness." So I decided to develop my own banished words list and extend it to include particularly offensive phrases, gestures and pronunciations. Here goes, in no special order.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Canine pal for Obamas
Mickey Rourke came back from virtual obscurity to win Best Actor at the Golden Globe Awards. And it's all because of a dog. Now I'm thinking there's someone else who could use a dog to help get him through the hard times. He takes office tomorrow as the president of the United States.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Grief during holidays
Grief knows no holiday. And for those who lose someone they love at Christmas time, the shock and loss can seem like a double blow. Even years after, the holiday remains a painful reminder for some. This year I know several people who are struggling through the holidays. One is a friend whose mother died four weeks before Thanksgiving.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Thanksgiving out
I was leafing through a list of Chicago restaurants open on Thanksgiving, feeling the first seeds of doubt begin to take root. At first a holiday weekend in one of my favorite cities two years ago seemed like a good idea: waking early to join the throngs for the parade, strolling through the Christkindlmarket, catching a holiday show. Later I wasn't so sure.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Halloweens past
During a fit of getting her affairs in order, my mother asked my sisters and me to go through her house and make a list of the things we wanted someday. The idea was to prevent arguments after she died, but as it turned out there was only one thing we all treasured: the pair of small pumpkin lanterns we'd carried as kids to go trick-or-treating.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Unique names
You're never too old to treasure stories about your childhood. One of my favorites is how I was supposed to be called Marquita, a name my father heard and liked, but that morphed in his memory to Marta by the time I was born. Now, that may be a common name in certain Latin American and Scandinavian countries, but it's all too rare here.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Summer's over already
Another summer has passed in a blur -- and not because of all the activity I crammed into it. No, I sat this summer out, sidelined by one thing or another, as the boat sat dry on its trailer, the bicycles and kayaks hung dusty from their hooks in the garage. It began with unexpected surgery.
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Marketing ideas takes inventive spirit
I'm trolling the kitchen store for gadgets to send home with my Pakistani exchange daughter when I come across Ice Kabobs, kabob-shaped molds you fill with your favorite drink to create frozen swizzle sticks. I buy them, but not before I wonder, "Who came up with these, anyway?"
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Late bloomers
Bleary-eyed and exhausted after senior prank night, my exchange daughter still is giddy with excitement as she dons cap and gown for the traditional Senior Walk through her school's halls. As "Pomp and Circumstance" plays over the speakers, I recall my own high school graduation nearly 35 years earlier with mixed feelings.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Dream turns nightmare
We're a week away from a Hawaiian vacation with overseas friends when "the curse" strikes. As women of a certain age know, what may have been a routine event in earlier adulthood can be cataclysmic now. I know something is wrong when my face in the mirror blends into the white wicker frame. I'm dizzy. My heart pounds when I cross the room.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Hate mail keeps on
A recent column on e-mail's tendency to free the inner bully in us all struck a chord with dozens of readers, many of whom made comparisons between e-mailers and drivers. Several readers contend people in the service industry run afoul of the nastiest correspondents. A few wrote with suggestions for e-mail etiquette, including a longtime attorney. Then there were those who missed the point completely.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Readers can be nasty
Is it just me, or did civility go out of vogue when e-mail communication came in? As a community newspaper that wants to be responsive to its readers, we encourage you to write -- and make it easier by including reporter e-mail addresses at the top of local stories and columns. Still, I'm surprised at the hostility with which some people take up the invitation.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Universal language of music
'Thump-thump-thump-thump" comes the insistent beat of a drum through the heat register upstairs where I'm working. The music is pounding from the office below, where our exchange daughter also is working -- to the tune of the Pakistani pop singer I'm trying to tune out.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Another view on obesity
It's not easy having diabetes. Worse than the expensive drugs and supplies, the endless measuring and monitoring, and the needle pricks that can leave your skin bruised and sore, is the constant threat of serious complications. Now those with the disease are being made to feel guilty, too.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Not joining the crowd
As a downtown employee, I do most of my gift-buying in the three blocks surrounding my office. I even have a downtown discount card I largely forget to show. This year, though, I did my Christmas shopping online.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Couple is making music together -- for a lifetime
Sandwiching their wedding between rehearsals and performances may not be the big day most couples dream about. But then, Anton Shelepov and Carrie Pierce are hardly typical.
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Marta Hepler Drahos: Dogs, age & bad backs
I was reading in bed, pinned between collie and hound, when the black shepherd decided to join us. Scooting over to make room, I felt it: That familiar wrench those with "bad backs" know can portend anything from a few stiff hours to complete incapacitation.
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Taking heart from random act of kindness
A while back, I wrote about an unlikely recognition day in September called National Feel the Love Day. Oddly enough, I'm not a particularly nice person myself. I'm easily irritated, quick to judge -- although, really, am I the only one who resents being held hostage to 20 minutes of previews and commercials before the film starts?
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Hemingway should serve as inspiration
