DEBORAH COPAKEN KOGAN

New links for your time-wasting enjoyment:

An interview I did with Mothertalkers.com. And here's their review of the new book.

Still on vacation, which has been nice but hard, since last year when the extended family was here together in Bethany Beach, my father had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Now he's gone, and though the house is full, it feels empty.

I wasn't going to post while on vacation, but today's interaction deserves a short mention.

The scene: I'm sitting on the beach this morning next to my daughter. The two of us are reading. Just behind us, near the dune fence, my three year old is lazing in a giant hole my brother-in-law has dug for him. He is happy as a proverbial clam, playing with sticks, talking to shells, digging with a shovel, singing to himself, etc. Not that clams necessarily sing to themselves, but you know what I mean.

Along comes a jogger, a woman, maybe 30 or 35 years old, definitely a mother, (more…)

Running off in a few hours to catch a train to visit my mother and spend some much-needed downtime with my family, but wanted to post the Today Show segment here for those of my friends and family who slept in this morning. Hi, friends. Hi, family. Hi, other strangers reading this (and thanks for your visit. I'd offer you lemonade, but like I said, there's a train to catch.) I'll see you all after Labor Day.

Oh, wait. One more thing before I go. I should make this very clear: my book, despite the way it's presented in this segment, is not a how-to parenting book. In fact, far be it from me to tell you how to parent. (14 years later, I'm still learning myself.) Rather, it's a bunch of comic essays, or as my publisher likes to put it, think Erma Bombeck on a Vespa. Which is a line I should have used on air, had I been thinking more clearly. At least I didn't pull a Cindy Brady. I wonder how many people are old enough to get that reference?

Oy, the train, the train! Bye!

(Want to read this on the Huffington Post instead? Click here.)

"So, Harlem?" a friend said to me recently, when we ran into one another near our sons' Upper East Side high school. She was referring to my family's recent move to Saint Nicholas Avenue and 146th Street, officially Sugar Hill, a once wealthy African American enclave immortalized in Billy Strayhorn's "Take the A Train" and home to such Harlem Renaissance luminaries as Ralph Ellison, Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, and W. E. B. Du Bois. "Good for you."

I tried to parse the meaning of the compliment, which I knew, because I love this friend, was paved with the best intentions. Good for me because she knew we'd been hit hard by the recession, and we needed to move to a cheaper neighborhood, so we moved? Or good for me because we'd been squeezing three children into a two bedroom apartment and now, for significantly less rent every month, we have three bedrooms, an office, and a deck? Or good for me because I'm now a white denizen of a predominantly black neighborhood, and that, along with a black man in the White House, is a sign of progress? (more…)

Eighteen years ago, I clipped the front page of a USA Today from August of 1991, which I've been storing in a file drawer ever since. Not because I shot the lead photo but because I am the lead photo, the lone woman in the crowd who dared to jump up on a tank, argue with its driver, and take a stand against communist hardliners. Except as any of you who've read Shutterbabe might remember, the caption is completely false. I was no Russian hero. I was just short, and American, and a coup was taking place, and I couldn't see a damned thing. In honor of the anniversary of the Soviet coup (which is really next week, but I'll be on vacation) and of misinformation everywhere, I finally made a scan of that newspaper clipping this morning before it and I crumble into dust. Check out the image on the left.

This is what happens when it's August, and daycare is on hiatus, and you need the hours of babysitting you have to finish assignments overdue, and your publisher suggests that a short video trailer for your book--which is coming out in 12 days--might be a good idea.

Click on the thingy to the left if you've got a minute. Actually, 53 seconds, but who's counting?

Pre-order Hell is Other Parents online before August 18th, forward your receipt to koganauthorquery@gmail.com, and your name will go into a drawing for a free Hell is Other Parents T-shirt. There are 85 T-shirts to be won, more if demand exceeds supply, so pass this on to friends. You can also go to my facebook fan page and share the link I just put up with this exact same contest info, so you don't have to cut and paste.

Okay, I know that was kind of a lame blog entry, but in this recession, who doesn't need a free semi-deranged T-shirt? I posted a photo of the men's T-shirt in the column on the left, and you can check out the women's version two photos down from that, but if you're reading this post a few years hence, the photos and the blog entries to which they belong will probably not be aligned so well, if at all--a programming snafu, if you ask me--but this is the template I'm using for now, so let's all be nice to it.