Catherine SmartMar 12, 20232 min readCake Review Season 1, Episode 1: Chocolate-on-Chocolate Birthday CakeI consider the foundational cake to be chocolate, with chocolate frosting.
Catherine SmartMay 9, 20223 min readDragonfire and Dirty DishesOnce upon a time, there was a land known far and wide for its outlet mall and its Ikea, and for excessively long traffic lights at...
Catherine SmartNov 12, 20215 min readPie Crust and Pooping PigeonsMaking pie crust involves a lot of aggressive pummeling…It’s very restorative. Like meditation that you can eat.
Catherine SmartAug 12, 20212 min readCoffee Together, Sort Of.I’m sitting in a Starbucks in the city, hunched over a spreadsheet. The radio is playing 1940s swing. An elderly gentleman comes in and...
Catherine SmartAug 12, 20217 min readEastham Chronicles Part 1 - Getting ThereEastham is a tiny town about 40 miles out on Cape Cod, in Massachusetts. I was lucky enough to go to high school there way back when,...
Catherine SmartJan 29, 20217 min readDesignated Grownups: A Kind-of TutorialThe world is full of designated grownups. You might be one because of your job, or your role in a family, or in a community. Designated...
Catherine SmartNov 6, 20203 min readVotes ‘n Dads ‘n StuffThis election meant a lot in so many ways. One of the coolest parts by far was that my son, Mr. Thing One, voted for the first time. The...
Catherine SmartNov 1, 20203 min readJe me souviens…I RememberNovember 1st. The day when, in a non-plague year, people are waking up from the (perhaps excesses of a) night of celebrating the...
Catherine SmartNov 11, 20192 min readPuppy(ies) LoveThese weren’t the great wracking sobs from the night the accident happened, but the kind of crying where your heart constricts and your...
Catherine SmartSep 2, 20191 min readFood.The world is on fire. Mostly figuratively, but also…actual fire. We talk to each other hatefully, hurtfully. People suffer – far and...
Catherine SmartJun 28, 20188 min readCome Fly With Me ( or, the Internal Ramblings of an Out-of-Practice Tourist)I’m about to take a trip. A trip on my own, for the first time in (counts fingers on both hands). I’m flying to Germany to visit family...
Catherine SmartMay 5, 20182 min readChia WhizWhile assiduously not grading MacBeth exams, I found myself scrolling through the internet looking for, well, pug memes (if you must...
Catherine SmartFeb 24, 20184 min readRuthless Re-imaginings: A Dramatic Interpretation of my Children as Macbeth’s WitchesACT I SCENE I. A basement place, a Thursday after school. Fluorescent lights flicker. Enter THREE TEENAGERS with bags of chips, sodas,...
Catherine SmartFeb 11, 20187 min readDeployment Cake, Honesty and Kurt Vonnegut’s UncleOur youngest rugrat, Facetiming Dad before school to show him a Lego creation Twenty years ago today, I was cutting the cake at my...