First Word

  CATS ARE TRENDING Cats are getting more attention than ever before.   Last year cats began trending on the Internet and social media. We saw cats in popular TV shows like And Just Like That where the character Che gives the iconic Carrie Bradshaw a kitten. On social media such as TikTok, Facebook and Instagram, cats took center stage in groups with titles like Cat Lovers. On Tiktok, cat enthusiasts post popular cat videos on the CatTok channel. With so much increased interest in our feline friends, a new book titled Kitty Wisdom: A Cat Lover’s Guide to Adopting and Caring for Kitties is being released for the new year.   Written by author Michelle Gamble, the book is her love letter to her two kitties, Slurpee and Icee. She wrote the book in a memoir style to share her adoption journey and all of the funny, entertaining moments she has experienced with her fur babies. Gamble walks readers through the adoption process and then explores dail...

  Let me be clear, I adored Sex and the City . The series was groundbreaking in every sense of the word. It frankly, openly and without judgment talked about relationships and sex in ways that no other TV show had done. It delved into women's issue with moxie and style.  However, this "thing" we call And Just Like That is so degraded and diluted into this sociological/political, over-the-top statement about every sexual and racial comment about today's culture that it's hardly recognizable.  Other reviewers have already explored its tragically misguided narrative and disjointed storyteller, so I am going to stick to character destruction, especially with our beloved Carrie Bradshaw.  In Season 2, Episode 2, our heroine Carrie pointedly refuses to do a vaginal suppository commercial. She fusses and fumes over having to essentially shill for the "vag," and to that end her character flips into uptight -- uncharacteristic -- behavior. She simply won't do...

We all have our favorite characters we love to root for whether in fiction or on TV or film. So, I thought I would share my short list of my favorites and see if you agree. P.S., there is no particular order here. I couldn't say if I had a no. #1 or not. And for all of you writers out there, pay attention. Your favorite characters are so, because they are well-developed and given so much "life" that you suspend your disbelief and root for imaginary friends. The "imaginary" part is what makes the story telling process so unbelievably powerful -- that we would cry, laugh, scream and cheer them on (and they're not real people). Sookie Stackhouse (Charlaine Harris' version not Alan Ball's version on True Blood ) -- in the books Sookie is real, fierce, brave, outspoken, funny and independent. While the book Sookie would never give herself over to the idea that one should ask forgiveness after really doing nothing wrong (like Sookie did in the season 4 ...