Carolyn Bucior

I remember my peculiar reaction the first time I heard someone was divorced. It's a moment burned into my now middle-aged mind, like my first funeral (I nervously laughed as I stood by the coffin), first communion (I practiced in front of my bedroom mirror with Necco wafers for weeks),...

Ninety-nine percent of family life has centered on group living -- in caves, in frontier settlements, on farms. Not until the 20th century did nuclear families, void of extended kin, routinely seek their own homes. The downsized family of two parents and one child in one house occupies a tiny...

Does your dog have a sense of self? Does your cat live her life with Zenlike awareness or is she just a pleasantly-packaged pet with mechanical eyes set in an unanimated, furry face?

Birds, dolphins, elephants, mice, pre-historic human beings... Do any creatures other than modern-day people possess what we...

When I read last month that NASA's Kepler space telescope was allowing scientists to spy on a potentially habitable planet 600 light years away and compare it to Earth (it's 72 degrees, 290 days to its year), I thought of one person: atheist and Elmer's glue...

Just one child. Just a waitress. Just an average student.

There are times when just is appropriate, as in "I'm OK. I just stubbed my toe." But often, the word spotlights exactly what the speaker, consciously or not, deems inferior or lacking.

Having raised one child, who is...

I have a peculiar habit of tracking incidents that land substitute teachers in hot water, a hobby I started in 2008 while researching a book.

It was impossible to miss the October story about substitute teacher Patricia McAllister, who was fired from Los Angeles Unified...

I don't want to interface with you later on that.

Or have a dialogue about it.

Or, God help me, language about it.

We'll just talk, like people have done for 100,000-350,000 years prior to the advent of interfacing and will continue to do, even if the...

Kegeling -- an easy, pelvic-floor exercise -- can help prevent incontinence and even heighten sexual pleasure, if done regularly. I had read this for years, long before Kegel Camp became the 36th most popular paid app in the health category.

But beneficial, free...

Researchers have recently documented that students' academic achievement suffers because of their regular teachers' absences.

--Raegen Miller, Associate Director for Education Research, Center for American Progress, writing on StudentsFirst.org blog, April 19, 2011

FADE IN

EXT- TOP OF GENTLE...

How much simpler could my instructions have been? Before I fully relaxed in Wanda's black Naugahyde chair, I showed her a photo torn from More magazine and said, "This length." For emphasis, I placed my right hand, palm down, mid-neck, and wagged it horizontally.

But when the snip, snip...

A month after my son left home for his freshman year at college, our dog died.

And when that first weekend arrived -- quietly, with no clipping of claws, no requests for the car or that specific groceries be purchased -- my husband and I sat across our kitchen...

From Shore News Today, New Jersey, August 23, 2011

When jobs were plentiful, available substitute teachers were a rare commodity. ... not anymore. It's a buyer's market today as a struggling economy and high unemployment create a surplus of available substitutes. ...

"It's a free-for-all at 5 a.m.,...

So you just heard that your child's substitute teacher is a hard-core, gay porn super-star who made movies with titles like Desperate Husbands and Mo' Bubble Butt and directed the Grabby Award-winning series World of Men.

Is that all you got?

Try these on...

There's a profile of the type of teacher most likely to be absent on any day. Meet profiler Raegen Miller, associate director for education research at the Center for American Progress.

Miller is to teacher absenteeism what Karen Silkwood was to nuclear power safety issues. The 40-something former...

This month, 500,000 hopeful substitute teachers are queuing up for work in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and countless small-town schools across the nation. I know from first-hand experience that the extra income and flexibility are big draws, especially if one is unemployed.

But I also know...

Thank you fellow cheesehead Kim Simac for reminding me how important it will be to vote in Wisconsin's nine-state Senate recall elections on August 9. It will Tea Party candidates like Simac and the ghost of William Jennings Bryan versus Miss Universe and the ghost of Clarence Darrow....

A surprising list of things increase along with unemployment: vasectomies (for obvious reasons), chipped and broken teeth (because the unemployed grind more), and applications to substitute teach.

Following the economic downturn that began in 2007, USA Today wrote that school districts nationwide were...

Gwyneth Paltrow is waffling on whether to return next season to her role as substitute teacher Holly Holiday in the TV hit series Glee. Holly, I hear you. Why would we take on such anarchic work for $18,000 a year when we could earn the same hourly wage (and I'm...