Wendy Dager

Ten years ago, when my older daughter was in middle school, I wrote a column about a teacher who misspelled a word in a homework assignment.

According to Bill Bryson's book "Made in America: An Informal History of the English "language of the United States," the first department store was Marble Dry-Goods Palace, which opened in 1846 in New York.

More than a decade ago, I received an assignment to write a feature story about school cafeteria food. I did the interviews and turned in what I thought was a pretty good, upbeat article. Shortly after that, the editor called ...

One scandal after another is hitting the headlines. Nope, it's not the usual suspects: actors, athletes and politicians. These are teachers — educators — getting arrested for alleged crimes. Some are from the Los Angeles Unified School District, where I ...

It's become almost cliché to say that if men could have babies, birth control would be cheaper, more reliable, easier to get, have fewer side effects, etc.

I first realized I had a problem when I accompanied my daughter, then in high school, to the school library to pay for a textbook she'd lost. The librarian asked for her student identification number. My daughter quietly slurred what ...

After the terrorists crashed those four planes in 2001, the patriotism and across-the-aisle bipartisanship was a source of pride for this country. Then, 10 years later, we were back to normal — with the bickering and mudslinging and anger at ...

There's a television commercial that features a bunch of women telling us we need to get serious about toilet paper. I'm guessing it's one toilet paper manufacturer's answer to another manufacturer's cute little cartoon bear. Both commercials make me cringe.

When I was 20, I smoked cigarettes. I was younger and thinner and much more glamorous then. I was single and had a high-pressure job. Cigarettes were only a dollar a pack. Restaurants had smoking sections. I wasn't hurting anyone.

It's that time of year again. Nope, not the time to regret having enough chutzpah to try out your aunt's newly invented and soon-to-be-retired fruitcake-mince pie-crème brûlée recipe. Although that's a truly appalling combination, what's far worse is Dager's annual ...

Far be it for this little ol' local writer to critique anyone as fancy as a Wall Street Journal columnist, but something he wrote made me wonder what he — and a bunch of his friends — are thinking.

Handshake deal

High school unconfidential

The mother

Honesty policy is underappreciated