The opening line of Anne Tyler’s 19th novel is self-consciously clever: “The strangest thing about my wife’s return from the dead was how other people reacted.” For a few pages, “ The Beginner’s Goodbye ” sounds like the sort of droll story Jose Saramago might write if he lived in Baltimore. But Tyler drops the spectral comedy almost immediately and returns to Earth with another wry tale of mournful folks with quirky occupations. In other words, it’s like the ghost of an Anne Tyler novel — a little immaterial but with enough residual matter to remind us of what we love about her books in the flesh. Read full article > >

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Anne Tyler’s ‘The Beginner’s Goodbye’: Widower keeps running into his late wife

Facebook has weighed in on a practice by some businesses asking employees or job applicants for their passwords to the popular social-media site.

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Facebook: Employers risk lawsuit

Has some words for director Davis Guggenheim

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Obama Doc Didn’t Do It for Romney

It’s an ominous day in ancient history: The ides of March, or the day of Julius Caesar’s back-stabbing assassination. And though that event happened many centuries ago — 44 B.C., to be precise — the day has taken on a superstitious aura, much like Friday the 13th. “Beware the Ides of March,” said the soothsayer in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and we’ve heeded those words ever since. Read full article > >

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Beware the Ides of March?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistani women who survive revenge-based acid attacks are, in the words of one, the “living dead.” But their stories take on new life in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Saving Face,” which follows two victims with disfiguring acid injuries as they attempt to reclaim their dignity and identities. Read full article > >

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Pakistani film follows survivors of acid attacks

A speech by Mitt Romney in Detroit Friday delivered an unintended lesson about how poor optics and errant words can derail a candidate’s message in this modern political news culture.

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For Romney, a Message Lost in the Empty Seats

Heeeeere’s John, who is saying something about cuss words and a hammer. Heeeeere’s Antonin, in a faked photograph that makes it appear he wears nothing beneath his judicial robe but black socks and garters. Read full article > >

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Supreme Court justices are being served on late-night television

As part of a plan to improve the nutritional quality of the food it sells, Walmart said that it would begin placing a label with the words Great for You on its Great Value and Marketside food items.

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Walmart to Add ‘Great for You’ Label to Healthy Foods

The problem with Mitt Romney’s latest boneheaded statement — “ I’m not concerned about the very poor ” — isn’t the ammunition that it gives political opponents eager to yank the Republican candidate’s words out of context. Read full article > >

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Why the poor should concern Romney

Reconstruct words based on brain waves.

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Scientists Listen In on Thoughts

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the Army’s vice chief of staff, is leaving the Army in much the same manner that he served in it over the past decade: as an iconoclast. The general, who retires Tuesday, used a final interview with The Washington Post to argue that the law banning women from combat jobs in the military was an unnecessary anachronism — and that women are already effectively serving in combat roles. Read full article > >

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Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, gives closing words of advocacy

Engaged: Barney Frank , 71, and longtime partner Jim Ready , 42, the congressman’s office confirmed for us Thursday, following a report by New England Cable News . Where’s the wedding? In Massachusetts, where gay nuptials were made legal in 2004. When? Sorry, that’s all the details they’d give. Frank is set to leave Congress next winter after 32 years, and he’s said the rigors of the job and the desire to devote more time to his relationship were factors. “I have a partner now,” Frank told Charlie Rose in an interview a couple weeks ago. “I’m in love for the first time in my life.” The couple met at a political fundraiser in Ready’s home state of Maine. The Advocate described him in 2009 as a Todd Palin lookalike and surfing enthusiast. Their mostly low-profile relationship has made the news a handful of times, when Ready exchanged words with his beau’s opponents at public forums, and when he was charged with having marijuana plants at his home in 2007. Read full article > >

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Barney Frank engaged to boyfriend Jim Ready (updated)

Sarah Palin, not one known to mince words, accused Chris Christie of committing a rookie mistake and playing into the hands of Democrats by denigrating Newt Gingrich.

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City Room: Palin Has a Few Choice Words for Christie

Young people are expressing their affection by swapping passwords to e-mail, Facebook and other accounts.

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Teenagers Sharing Passwords as Show of Affection

A movie screen periodically usurps part of a Norwegian living room in Scena Theatre’s “Hedda Gabler.” It happens at the rear of the room, behind the fashionably uncomfortable 1930s furniture, where white, gauzy curtains conceal a balcony. Before Act I starts, black-and-white footage of rural and maritime Scandinavia flickers across the curtains, turning them into a de facto screen; at intermission, the word “Intermission” spells itself out in a retro font. There’s a suggestion, in other words, that we’re watching a 1930s “Hedda Gabler” movie — and that’s a prudent hint for director Robert McNamara to drop, because his brisk and watchable, if not revelatory, production contains some acting so hyperbolic it seems movie-palace scale. Read full article > >

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At Scena Theatre, a hyperbolic ‘Hedda Gabler’