Here’s an indelible memory from childhood: my maternal grandmother parked at her white formica kitchen table, ballpoint pen in hand, working the New York Times Sunday crossword. A few other salient details: the pale teabag from her first cup of watery...

In the past week, the nation has suffered two great paroxysms: a once-in-a-generation “superstorm,” and a presidential election. History will be the judge of which of these storms was the more expensive and destructive, but from this citizen’s...

I’m a sucker for a hand-made gift. One of the happiest moments of my life was when my daughter gave me a very realistic three-foot shark with a laser attached to its head that she’d made out of gray and white duct tape. This was the culmination of an...

Road rage is deadly serious, but that doesn’t mean it can’t bring a smile to your face. Take, for example, the story a friend of mine likes to tell about the day he won the lottery. It wasn’t a huge win, not a life-changing one, anyway -- although,...

The Olshans are now in the sixth year of a running experiment: is it possible to take a child with a tin ear and turn her into a concert cellist? I can already hear the objections welling up from the grandparents. “A tin ear? How dare you say that about our...

The fact that this year’s deer hunt was my first ever came as a kind of shock to my neighbors on St. Peters Church Road. “Your first time?” they said, with a mixture of wonder, and perhaps even a little embarrassment on my behalf....

The Great Hunt of 2012, as I’ve been calling it in emails to puzzled and somewhat disappointed friends, apparently involved me in not one, but two primal activities: hunting, yes, of course; followed by obsessive story-telling about the hunt. Last week’s...

Here are a few of our favorite purchases of 2012. Some of these items made cameo appearances in my columns; some we simply enjoyed; and one of them saved our bacon. Here’s hoping one of them will save yours! For the record, we give as much of our business to...

It may come as a shock, but some of the letters addressed to the author of Up at the Creek are not terribly friendly. My very first column in these pages, way back in April of 2009, took the owner of a humble carwash to task simply for doing his job. If it...

Our daughter has reached the age of fourteen, which means she’s old enough to hear what she was really like as a child. She’ll listen to these stories the way we all suffer such things: eyes wide with fascination, her head in a slightly defensive tilt, a...

It had been an evening of wine, food, and laughter with good friends, and now it was the day after -- December 31st, to be exact, a heavy, bone-chilling, blustery day, perfect for drinking coffee around the kitchen stove. But our guests weren’t...

We have a special houseguest this month, a teenager from China named Wenrui who happens to be our daughter’s classmate and friend. In case you’re wondering, her name is pronounced “When-ray.” Like many Chinese students in the States, Wenrui has...

It’s been nearly ten years since I heard my grandfather’s voice -- we laid him to rest in Arlington Cemetery in 2003 -- but last week a letter arrived by email that brought it right back. In March of 1945, a not-so-young Nathan Hale Olshan was deployed...

Our daughter’s classmate, Wenrui (“When-ray”), has now been living with us for a few weeks, long enough to have taught me a few lessons about living bravely in a foreign country. Most of these have had to do with food. Wenrui is an exceedingly polite...

I got into an argument with a poet in Lithuania the other day. On Facebook. It started with perfectly normal Facebook behavior. The poet -- who, by the way, used to live on Warm Springs Road, but has since relocated to Vilnius -- reposted an article from Slate.com...