B E B E R E

Real Simple.

Every day, he'd sit in his office for a bit perusing the Financial Times, Courrier International, Marianne.

In my little corner, I'd read through back issues of Foreign Affairs, Commentary and the Weekly Standard.

At one point, we exchanged. A neck muscle began throbbing as I read some snark about President Bush in Marianne and I could feel the heat rising from under my collar as I flipped through Courrier's cover story on "Palestinian Voices." ...mais "discrètement, elle se tût."

He didn't fare much better with my choices: declared that horrible things would happen to me for the awful things I was reading. To be honest, I don't know which he thought was worse: the Weekly Neoconservative mouthpiece, or the Jewish one.

As a sort of peace offering, I offered him a copy of my Interweave Knits, which he did enjoy. (It's more or less the same format as his Fine Woodworking, so I figured he might like it.)

After that? Real Simple. His response? "If that's a periodical for women, they certainly did get the title right, anyway."