Robin Whetstone

Lawlessness at the Georgia Square Mall. Published August, 2012 in the Flagpole Magazine I first discovered the rules of the mall when I was loitering (rule 8) in an alcove next to the Chinese massage kiosk, waiting for a group of boisterous teens (rule 3) to pass. The rules are displayed there on an official-looking blue sign, and are written in language you've come to expect from a bureaucratized society. The usual suspects are there: no gangs, no guns, no violence, no drugs. But what caught my attention and motivated me to write this column was the final rule. Rule number 24: no fishing, swimming or boating without prior written approval of shopping center management. Really? Seriously? I guess I understand why we shouldn't shoot people or show our underwear at the mall, but fishing? Boating? This just seems beyond the pale, particularly since there are no lakes, ponds or fountains at the Georgia Square Mall. I realized I needed to go down there and ask some tough que...

When you're a mom, it seems like you'd have a lot in common with other moms. You're both exhausted. You both can change a diaper while eating a hamburger while making a doctor's appointment while driving a car. She has spit-up on her shoulder? Yeah, well you have Goldfish in your hair. But it's surprisingly hard to make mom friends. Go to any park or playground, and you'll see lots of Lone Moms dotting the landscape, swiping at their smartphones while their children play. I don't know why this is, but it's always kind of bothered me. Raising children can be a terribly isolating endeavor. You are busy, but also bored, since most of the tasks required of you are mundane, repetitive ones like loading the dishwasher, cooking food, and extinguishing the dog. You are surrounded by people all day, but these people are mostly pre-verbal, so you end up feeling lonely a lot of the time. I would think that moms would flock to each other like toddlers flock...

I am reading a fantastic book by the woman who wrote one of my favorite cookbooks, Please to the Table . It is called Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking , and she's looking at the experience of loving, hating, and leaving Russia through the lens of food. This is a particularly apt approach because so much of Russian history has been marked by famine and want. A few years ago I had sort of the same thought she did, and wrote an essay about the unexpected things I learned when I visited Moscow's Museum of Popular Nutrition during some very lean (though not the leanest) times in Russia. Here it is: Excursions I’d glimpsed it just once, fleetingly, in 1991. The sightseeing bus my schoolmates and I were riding on pulled away from the stoplight before I could note the location, or even really register what I’d seen. Under normal circumstances I’d have told myself I was imagining things, surely, but in Moscow? It was entirely possible that the sign I’d seen as the bus merged i...

But it's really about growing up in Orange Park, Florida in 1985.  Backstage on the night of David Byrne’s first London show, everyone was being shuffled by a friendly-yet-menacing security guard towards a magic-markered sign at the end of the hallway. "Artist's Bar," it said. I was walking in between my boyfriend and Steve, who had just written a movie about the American South. Some old bald guy in a silky shirt was just in front of us. The bald guy and boyfriend were talking; I was chatting with Steve. I got a Stella out of the tub on the plywood bar and walked to the big table they'd snagged in the corner. As I sat down boyfriend yelled "Robin! This is Brian!" "What's your name again?" I leaned over, shaking the bald man’s hand. "Brian!" he yelled over the noise. "Nice to meet you!" I cried. Boyfriend stood up and started to walk away, stopping to catch my arm up and tug me out of my seat towards ...

By RobinWhetstone. Published July 11, 2012, in  Flagpole.   Pro life. Pro choice. Pro Obama. Pro Romney. Pro chicken. Pro zombie. People with something to say usually paste stickers to their bumpers and leave it at that. Not Matthew Barrick. He needs more than the back of a car for his message. He needs an en tire truck. Read more >