This particular Valentine's Day prompts me to express something I’ve wanted to shout from the rooftops for awhile now.

I realize more and more that late love can be just as romantic as young love. And I think what makes it especially precious is that you realize… Read full post »

She is maybe 25 years younger here than I am in in my avatar, but can you see a similarity?

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who died in 1994 at the age of 64, was 13 years older than I am.

When I was in my 20s-40s and she was… Read full post »

 on the Costa Atlantica bridge, with the captain 

I've been a travel writer for over 30 years.  (In fact, in the 1990's I wrote a book called The World's Most Exciting Cruises.) So seeing the images of the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia and hearing of the fatalities was/… Read full post »

Since 2001 I've lived on the 22nd floor of a condo in downtown Miami, my home in the sky. I came here from New York with my husband, who had just retired. Three months later he unexpectedly died. So I lived alone here, with my cat Sweetie, for almost 10 years until… Read full post »

woods ahead,  from my window,  5 years ago 

Anyone who has had cancer or has been around cancer survivors knows the connotation of reaching year five from diagnosis: You’re out of the woods.

It’s an informal, somewhat arbitrary milestone,… Read full post »

Throughout 2011 we've shared  our deepest feelings and experiences: happy times, and many sad and even tragic ones.  

Especially for those who've had a tough year, and for us all:

Here’s to an uncomplicated 2012… Read full post »

Growing up, even though I seemed to make lots of friends I just figured they didn’t know the real me. That’s what my mother had been telling me during my childhood, over and over: “They don’t really know you. They don’t live with you.” I heard it so much… Read full post »

I recently saw two movies dealing with the end of the world -- Melancholia and Tree of Life. These artsy films sparked a remembrance of doomsday fears I once felt. Honestly, I often think of it when this time of year comes around.

What has come to be known as… Read full post »

I want to create an accessible record of my existence.

I like being associated with Salon, especially in their new incarnation.

It keeps me out of trouble.

Writing gigs that offer pay have dried up. And even when they paid they paid a pittance.

When people ask what I do all… Read full post »

 Gilbert, Arthur and Anna Schacht, my uncles and aunt 

When I was a child, looking through a family album, I remember asking my mother why there was a face cut out of a photo of a little girl in a frilly dress standing next to my mother’s two… Read full post »

I've never written before about this. Perhaps it will trigger me getting to that memoir; it's all true, and unfolds-- slowly, steadily -- in almost mystifying ways. 

The slim, dark-haired woman sitting at the table in the Westchester brasserie was reading Pride and Preju… Read full post »

John's blog

That morning is one none of us will, or should forget. So here is one remembrance:

On September 11, 2001 at 8 am I was in a clinic… Read full post »

  Sabrina, leaving flowers in front of the 9/11 commemorative tiles, on her way to school 

Typhoons outside Philippines (ahooy.com) 

Debate has ensued about “crying wolf” and the overhyped hurricane coverage. Here’s an example of the other extreme:

In the fall of 1989 I was living at a basic hotel near the airport, outside Manila. I was executi… Read full post »

The official photo of the Virgin inaugural flight (flightglobal.com), June, 1984. Invited passengers, with Richard Branson on the far left. Can you spot me  way in the back, at the top of the pyramid?

Sir Richard Branson's estate on his private Caribbean island just b… Read full post »

Egon 

A couple of weeks ago, cruising around Scandinavia on the Italian ship MSC Poesia (“poetry” – can there be a lovelier name?), I met a brilliant and charming Swiss man, a tablemate at dinner named Egon who had booked passage on the ship f… Read full post »

Last week I traveled around Norway, and observed close-up the mourning of a country that had suffered a shocking tragedy the week before.

All the while, in my own little drama, I was waiting for a biopsy report that I requested sent to me by email… Read full post »

In my heavy dating period in the mid-1990s, I met a charming man who had a thing for words. He was a good writer but made his living as an attorney. His dad had been a news editor at a New York paper,… Read full post »

awthrule.blogspot.com 

If I may kvetch just a bit, here's a short list of my least favorite summer things:

Wearing a bathing suit. I'm so tired of shimmying into the one suit that fits. And my timing is off. When I was young and sleek the style was a modest one-pie/… Read full post »

Sometimes we need to get outside of ourselves to see who we really are.

Messages poured in from all over the world celebrating the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Can you remember his election night speech in Chicago, and the thrill of… Read full post »