Mary Novaria

As if gray, post-holiday, winter days aren’t dreary enough, the sad news came of author Elizabeth Wurtzel’s death from breast cancer . She was only 52. Her seminal work, Prozac Nation , had a profound impact on me when I first read it as the mother of two young children back in the mid 1990s. I can still see myself turning the pages, propped up on my bed in the new Kansas house. My eldest was probably in First Grade and my youngest napping. It was before we’d decorated the bedroom or renovated the master bath. The walls were still that grayish  builder’s white and the comforter on the bed, from early in our marriage, was worn and faded, which was how I felt sometimes, too. My memories of reading Prozac Nation are linked to place and time like no other book I can recall. Sure, I might remember reading this book on an airplane, or that one at the beach, but I am so rooted to that snapshot of my thirtysomething self with my nose in Wurtzel’s book. Not...

                                                        ots-photo/Fotolia Grass has begun to grow in Los Angeles after just two days of steady rain. At the top of our street, tender, green shoots have sprung up on a brown, dusty hill that’s been hospitable only to the gophers. Save for parks and golf courses, there’s relatively little grass here. Unlike the suburban Midwest, where the houses around us had verdant lawns nourished by sprinkler systems, most of our neighbors here have replaced their grass with succulents and rocks. Still, there are a few holdouts and, three years into Southern California drought culture, I feel judgy when I see a well-watered patch of grass. I’m fueled by Curbed LA , which regularly drought shames municipalities (Beverly Hills) and individuals (Tom Selleck and the Kardashians) for their disregard of our co...