Energized by recent Republican victories and a jolt of tea-baggers, CPAC 2010  --the Conservative Political Action Committee (or Conference; you see both) --  runs from Thursday to Saturday in DC, and has already generated headlines: Cheney surprised and snarled, and peo/… Read full post »

We’ve gotten used to the iPod and the iPhone; now here comes the iPad. In the coming years I assume we can look forward to a host of other magic gadgets, solving problems with alliterative names:

The iPop Pops corn while you watch movies. Also tells… Read full post »

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Today is the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Indian constitution, celebrated as Republic Day. India is proud and thriving.

I remember twenty five years ago, when the air is clean and the sky is eye-blue on this January  national holiday… Read full post »

There has been jarring rhetoric in the last week: shocking racist comments about the Haiti crisis by Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh; the archaic usages of race and color of Senator Harry Reid. Today, on the eighty-first birthday of Martin Luther King, I’m thinking about my early years… Read full post »

In 2010 I do NOT resolve to:

1…Stop reading the tabloids at the checkout counter.  Forget it. I need to read something besides OS. I’ve already stopped reading newspapers, magazines, books and grocery lists.

2…Drink less. I don’t drink that much. On… Read full post »

oasiswine.com

UPDATE: Emails sent between Tareq and Michaele Salahi and Pentagon official Michelle S. Jones show that the couple was never granted approval to attend last week's White House state dinner, according to ABC News. Yet,… Read full post »

freewebs.com

(Exactly as I remember, on awakening, with my analysis/comments/questions in parentheses.)

I was at a rehearsal of a Broadway show like Bye Bye Birdie or Grease. A retro show, in color. People were… Read full post »

  Membersvirtualtourist.com

We’ll get to the famed fellow who gifted me with good jewelry an hour after we met (24-carat gold, thank you very much). But first, a few other reflections of two trips to Rio, that heartbreakingly beautiful and beautifully heartbreaking city,/… Read full post »

Failure to repent is much worse than sin. One may have sinned for but a moment, but may fail to repent of it moments without number. Chasidic saying

Today on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews around the world repent for the past year's sins, wiping the… Read full post »

 solitude, overlooking a herring weir, off a cliff in the Bay of Fundy

I’ve been reading  BuffyW ‘s posts of coping with her beloved husband’s passing and AtHomePilgrim’s series about his brother’s death. And many of us are dealing with lo/… Read full post »

As I read the obituaries about Edward Kennedy's death, I feel great empathy. My late husband, Chaim Stern, was diagnosed with glioblastoma in July, 2001-- the same type of aggressive tumor that killed the senator. And so I'm moved to post again a tribute to my brave Chaim.… Read full post »

rd.com

Many of us who grew up in the era of "Mad Men" can look back at similar office experiences. (Silkstone wrote a vivid portrait of her office days: here.)

After watching the first episode of Season Three,  I reflected back on two of… Read full post »

President Obama says the worst might be over. The market is rising and unemployment has stabilized. But for many of us, it will be a long-haul back to recovery.

I’ve had a roller coaster financial life: well-off (early) and scrappy and single (later) and everything in-between.&nb… Read full post »

The movie Julie & Julia, and my recent trip to Paris where much of this movie is set, reminded me of how huge a role Julia Child played for those of us who learned to cook in the 1960s and 70s. Her Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volumes/… Read full post »

Manhattan's only Frank Gehry-designed building, from the High Line

No, it isn't cocaine.  The High Line is a flower-filled ribbon of new parkland created from the unused elevated freight lines that ran downtown along the Hudson. I recently strolled there with my granddaugh… Read full post »

 My frequently "adopted city," Ottawa, when I traveled in past years

I'm proud that we elected Barack Obama, and proud of how most of the world feels about that. But in recent years, things haven't been that easy for American travelers going abroad.

Having been… Read full post »

"Hialeah." That was the joke I had to endure throughout my childhood, although I don’t think I was named for that Miami track filled with flamingos. But then again, I might be. I could be. Oh it's probably true, but my parents were afraid to admit it.… Read full post »

Two icons, opposite in almost every way, both died too young on Thursday. Ironically,  Michael Jackson called the series of concerts he was planning in London, "The Final Curtain Call."

From USA Today: 

The cause of Michael Jackson’s premature death wil… Read full post »

(Anne Frank by Werner Horvath)

Peter Wilhelm Art Center in Budapest will honor Anne Frank's 80^th birthday with an original artwork exhibition this month 

 (The shooting by an antisemitic 88-year-old man at the Holocaust Museum in Washington is a reminder that antisemitism… Read full post »

"I had a dream my life would be
So different from the hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed.
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

-- from I Dream a Dream, Susan Boyle's chosen song  for her audition and finale

Like millions… Read full post »

Maybe I have a thing for height-challenged males in tuxedos. Whatever it is, I’m crazy, nuts, gaga, batty, over-the-moon -- about penguins. And I’ve met quite a few of the 17 varieties.

I’ve met Rockhoppers. Their yellow feathers make them look like blonde surfer dudes. They hang… Read full post »

I write this as I fly through the night, watching lightning course through thunderheads towering above the dark Caribbean. They seem close, to my right. When the bolts arc through the clouds, for a second or so the sky becomes as blue as at noon. I’ve seen other… Read full post »

OK, I saw Irritated Mother’s spoof of Kerry’s supposed cover portrait in the The New Yorker. And I realized I have a connection with that magazine, too.        

A lifelong dream since my college creative writing class was to be published in that… Read full post »

A typical building in La Boca, a suburb of Buenos Aires

Walking in a neighborhood is one of my favorite things: the sounds, smells and sights give you a vibrant idea of how people really live. And probably the most colorful neighborhood I’ve ever visited… Read full post »