Linda Flanagan

Teenage drinking and mild recreational drug use are a part of the social fabric in Summit, New Jersey, where I live. Like many wealthy east coast suburbs populated with competitive and high-achieving families, my town teems with parents who run around enhancing their children's college options and stressed-out kids who...

It's juice cleanse day for my daughter, Julie, and me. We decided weeks ago, after too many days of too much garbage, that we'd try a cleanse. Many friends had experimented with them, and a store in town packaged the juices, promising just the right blend of fruits, vegetables and...

James Q. Wilson died early Friday morning at a hospital in Boston. The public policy intellectual who published a staggering number of books and articles on all manner of issues, including crime, politics, character and marriage, was 80.

Wilson was not a household name, but in the scholarly world...

It was 8:45 at night when Carrie Strickland set aside The Blind Side to answer the call she'd dreaded and yet somehow expected. "My son said, 'I think its Daddy,'" she told me two years and a day after she heard the news. In fact, the Red Cross was on...

Today is SAT day -- our daughter's first. It's 6:10.

"You want the usual?"

"Um... yeah," she says, eyes on her phone.

As I pop the bagel into the toaster, my husband Bob scurries out of his office, still in his Life is Good pajamas. His up-tempo gives...

Please circle the correct answer. In New Jersey, a bully is someone who:

a. Pulls Kyle's shorts down in gym.
b. Starts an "I hate John" Facebook page.
c. Sends the following text message to Jacob: "You suck #@$%"
d. Scolds Erin in front of class for...

Like their classmates around the state, 4th graders in public schools in Summit, N.J. this year will be shepherded into class by the school nurse, separated by gender, and formally introduced to "human growth and development" -- what we used to call sex ed. They'll sit through a power point...

With school starting again in a few weeks, parents already are agitating about their kids' teachers. I should know: I pleaded with my son's guidance counselor to spare him a year with the 8th grade English teacher who denies that "fishes" is a legitimate word. We fear that time spent...

In his interview last week with Chris Matthews at the Nantucket Film Festival, director and screenwriter Paul Haggis interrupted the lovefest with the audience just once. How, Matthews asked, did all those women James Bond screwed -- especially in Casino Royale, which Haggis helped write -- avoid getting pregnant? "They've...

Aging punk rockers and the New York Times might not seem to have much in common, but staying afloat in a rapidly changing digital world is a theme shared by The Other F Word and Page One: A Year Inside the New York Times, two films that were screened over...

It's pouring rain on Nantucket, but we don't mind. We're here for the The Nantucket Film Festival, which opened June 22nd with screenings of Cars 2 and Buck.

This is the festival's 16th year. "In our early years, it was a much more ragtag event," Artistic Director Mystelle Brabbee said...

If you have no personal experience with Washington other than paying the tab in mid-April, you might be tempted to buy into the Republican line about government: that it's full of loafers and ne'er-do-wells who spend all day pushing paper around, taking holidays and generally finding ways to waste your...

"I'm not the parent I thought I'd be," one mother told me the morning after picking up her ninth-grade son from a party in Summit, New Jersey, one of the many affluent suburbs circling New York City, where we both live. He'd called the night before and implored her to...

It's Monday morning, and tales about the weekend start trickling in. Did you hear about the sweet 16? Three kids passed out, one girl turned up naked and unconscious, and the police came and hauled everyone in. Tut-tut, isn't it awful. Next Monday: different characters, same outcome.

Ho-hum. Underage...

The severe woman in the row behind me had to know I supported the opposing team, but my presence didn't make a difference. "Just watch, he's not gonna make the shots," she said to her husband when one of the players on my son's 7th grade basketball team went up...

Oscar time is almost here, and there's mischief in the air. In the documentary category, much of the buzz surrounds what will happen if Exit Through the Gift Shop, a quirky film directed -- allegedly -- by the mysterious and elusive British graffiti artist Banksy, wins. Will Banksy himself accept...

The stars aligned for first-time filmmaker Vicki Abeles when her documentary Race to Nowhere was shown to some audiences at the start of 2011, including a full auditorium at the public high school in our town. She couldn't have known that Amy Chua's Tiger Mother memoir would have sparked such...

The Tillman Story was screened at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, on November 15. Director Amir Bar-Lev appeared at the screening and took part in a Q&A afterward with faculty and cadets from the Academy. Linda Flanagan interviewed Mr. Bar-Lev on November 23 about the experience.

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