And, this is the money chapter as put through Wordle. This is the chapter that got me on “The Today Show,” so it will always have a special place in my heart. And my press kit.

Here is an excerpt from the money chapter that was published in the Globe Sunday magazine.

This was apparently a one-time, never-to-be-repeated glitch. A few weeks ago, a friend e-mailed me:

I meant to send you this before. When I ordered your book on Amazon, this book came up under the “People who bought this book also bought…” It pleased me, though I’m not quite sure why.

A Taste for Red (Hardcover)
by Lewis Harris (Author)

Editorial Reviews
Review
“I loved it! Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets Nancy Drew. Svetlana is a fresh, strong, and witty voice and I hope we will hear more about her adventures as she accepts and hones her newfound talent and abilities.” (Diana Capriola, Little shop of Stories, Decatur, Georgia )

Product Description
A sixth-grade Goth girl who thinks she’s a vampire encounters her greatest nemesis when she enrolls at Sunny Hill Middle School in this hilarious and entirely original take on the vampire genre for middle graders.

Svetlana Grimm has recently discovered she’s a vampire. The clues are all there: she can eat only red foods, has to sleep under the bed because of her heightened sensitivity to light and noise, and can read others’ thoughts. But this new discovery is making her transition from home-schooling to attending sixth grade at Sunny Hill Middle School that much more difficult. After all, what can she possibly have in common with those jellybean-eaters in her class? She prefers to watch them from afar in her hidden lair atop the Oak of Doom in her backyard.

But things get more interesting when Svetlana’s cruel yet beautiful science teacher, Ms. Larch, reads her thoughts. Svetlana is excited to have found another of her kind—until her new neighbor, The Bone Lady, fills her in on Ms. Larch’s true identity and her own. What happens when your sixth-grade science teacher might also be your immortal enemy?

Sounds like Svetlana is dealing with plenty of diversity. She could use Miss Conduct’s words of wisdom.

Kids are resilient, and parents are people. Those are the two fundamental premises of the “Mother, May I? Children” chapter of Miss Conduct’s Mind over Manners. I’ve heard from a number of moms that they liked this chapter a lot, which really pleases me. On all the other topics–food, money, religion, relationships, health, pets–I’ve got some personal skin in the game. This was the one chapter for which that isn’t the case. So thank you, all you parents and readers, for schooling me!

Here is a fascinating letter I got shortly before Mind over Manners was published, from an advance reader who called himself a “case study” for the book:

I have spent the last 30 years as a practicing/lapsed/practicing/lapsed Hare Krishna, and while I haven’t told more than 6-7 people that, in the 13 years I have lived in [State], I have found that many people take great offense at the restrictions and prohibitions that I am obligated to disclose in the workplace, volunteering, etc.

None of them have any idea of why I attempt to maintain the restrictions, but that doesn’t stop them from wildly speculating:

“He rides a bicycle instead of driving a car because he lost his license” (not because it is healthy)
“It must because he is an alcoholic, did you know he refuses to go to company get-togethers if alcohol is served”
“I think my neighbor is a racist who doesn’t like black people; why else won’t he come over for barbeque and beer and sports talk?”
“And he doesn’t mind working on Christian holidays….how are we ever going to discourage our company from working on holidays if HE does?” And on and on and on………

I am beginning to think that wearing my chosen religion on my sleeve, on the bookshelf in my cubicle, on the teeshirt under my work clothes may have been the correct choice, because as it stands, I have left a wake of people that are completely convinced I don’t like them for the color of their skin, because they are the boss, because of…….. Anything but the simple and correct understanding which is that everyone is allowed to decide what they eat, what they drink, who they associate with, and until a behavior rises to the level of insult, hostility, violence, etc., the practitioner owes no one an apology or an explanation.

I recently answered a Craigslist ad, when I arrived at the person’s house; he was doing yard work in a leather kilt. I didn’t ask, he didn’t tell. That behavior was easy for me, because of all my memories of being rudely interrogated for behaviors that aren’t illegal, didn’t put anyone at risk, and weren’t anyone’s business.

My response to come shortly. Keeping comments closed for now but I’ll open them up after I’ve posted my thoughts.

Here’s “She Said, He Said: Sex & Relationships” chapter from my book, Wordle’d into art. Note the semi-prominent “Coolfriend” (above “Women”) and “Mensch” (between “People” and “Men”). Mr. Mensch, you see, used the best asking-out line ever on Ms. Coolfriend. You’ll have to read the book to find out what it was, and why exactly it is so good.

You can change the fonts and colors in Wordle to make your word clouds look all sorts of different ways. I liked this because it looks like writing on a cast! Appropriate for a chapter about the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.

The food chapter? You guessed right, you clever person!

Here’s the opening of that chapter:

“Food is the first thing, morals follow on.”*
— Bertolt Brecht, The Threepenny Opera

In Brecht’s world of thieves, whores, and orphans, morality may have been a luxury only to be considered on a full belly, but moral questions in twenty-first-century America start well before you get to the table. Chicken or tofu? Grass-fed or corn-fed? Kosher or trayf? Imported organic or pesticide-sprayed local? And is “free-range” just another word for nothing left to lose?

*Another popular translation from the original German, “First you must feed us, then we’ll all behave,” strongly suggests that the translator never hosted a children’s birthday party.

Via Wordle …

It’s about religion. And people. Christmas kind of comes up a lot.

Heads-up, gang, I’ll be on the Alan Colmes radio show tonight, from 11-11:30 Eastern Time. I think we’ll be doing call-ins, so feel free to ring up with your questions!

… and here’s the pets chapter of MCMoM, as put through Wordle:

It’s about people and dogs.

(Note to cat-, bird-, fish-, and other-non-canine-pet-lovers: I’m not prejudiced against your pets, but it’s dogs that create the need for etiquette guidance. As I explain in the book, “as the most social of pets, [dogs] are the ones that most often bring their owners into contact with people. Strangers aren’t likely to pet your Jack Dempsey fighting fish without permission, and if a ferret sticks its nose in your crotch you are probably in a Farrelly Brothers movie, which puts you well beyond the reach of etiquette advice. So while the recommendations for handling pets apply to all animals—and, as you’ll see, much more occasionally other enthusiasms—I’ll let the family dog drag us around the block of pet psychology and etiquette.”)

Here’s a fun thing: I dumped the introductory chapter of my book into Wordle. Wordle … um, it’s kind of hard to explain what it does, so I’ll use the site’s own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

Yeah, that. Anyway, here’s the intro to MCMoM:

It’s a book about people.

My appearance on WFXT this morning is online here if you missed it.

(Don’t click the picture above, that’s just for visual interest. And to show you all how very very much I can look like a Vulcan in the right angle. Lucky for me that look is in this summer.)

UPDATE: Thanks to my awesome webmistress, you now can click directly on the picture.

I can’t help but feel they published this one just for me.

… featuring, of course, the incomparable MILO! This is the second of two promotional videos that Mr. Improbable and I put together for the book. Yes, it’s got that “not ready for prime-time” feel, but aren’t Milo and I cute?

In case any of you haven’t seen, in addition to today’s column, I have a feature on money etiquette in today’s magazine. This is an excerpt from Miss Conduct’s Mind Over Manners (which goes on sale Tuesday!).

Also, boston.com has a fun photo feature based on tips from MCMom–plus three bonus tips on Facebook etiquette.