***this is not an OS flounce.  It is mere commentary on the state of writing today*****

“I’m going to go out in the yard and eat worms,” is how the rest of that sad ditty goes.  If you didn’t say it as a child, you know… Read full post »

As women, we’ve all had our “aha moments.  Mine came when I watched Anita Hill testify at the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in the early Nineties.  I found nothing she said fantastic or unbelieva/… Read full post »

        My daughter asks a lot of questions; she wants to know the definitions of words, what things… Read full post »

                “I’m looking forward to Christmas,” an old friend tells me over the phone.  She’s spending it with her Jewish ex-husband and two half-Jewish college-aged… Read full post »

                 “Every customer is valuable and, they’re even more valuable today because there are fewer of them.” Ron Frasch,  chief merchant of Saks Fifth Avenue, on improving service in… Read full post »

                Ever since I was a little girl living in rural East Tennessee, I remember seeing jars by the cash registers of drugstores, convenience stores and small supermarkets. The jars had hand-letter… Read full post »

                          There are post-it notes all over my mother’… Read full post »

Whenever  I am lucky enough to go to the ocean, whether it is to stay in a friend’s house or a rented hotel, I always drive around the neighborhoods and look at the prime oceanfront properties.  Part of me continually wonders:  Who  are the/… Read full post »

Arianna Huffington ‘s headline in HuffPo  Tuesday was “Obama One Year Later:  The Audacity of Winning vs The Timidity of Governing." On Wednesday’s Hardball MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews was pissed:  he thought  Obama had already/… Read full post »

I don’t think I or any woman I know needs to read  The Shriver Report:  A Women’s Nation Changes Everything http://www.awomansnation.com/ by  Maria Shriver and The Center for American Progress.  Although the Report is being  highly touted as i/… Read full post »

All of you writers and would-be writers who have never been sexually abused by your parents, suffered from domestic assault, been abandoned on a highway somewhere by grandparents when raising you got to be too much; any of you who have never suffered from anorexia or bulimia, are not… Read full post »

TV Guide is published weekly; everyone knows they can get their television listings in their local newspaper or on their newspaper's website.  Television and movie reviews are all over the web and the nightly news is available on  three national networks, two all news net… Read full post »

                 Duh.

Okay, perhaps the New York Times article that graced the front page of the Style section recently deserves a little more parsing than that.

    &nb… Read full post »

Once upon a time, a little Pollyanna-ish I know, I actually believed that most people were decent, most people were inherently good, and most people when given the chance were kind.  I also believed in a) manners b) civility and c) generally good behavior in pub/… Read full post »

        It’s not often that television shows speak to my life.  Mostly they provide entertainment, escape, and, if I choose wisely, elegant writing and some humor and pathos.  Thirtysomething is the last show I recall that hit me… Read full post »

            Sometime in the middle of the self-help movement in the early seventies, my father came to the dinner table with a book he had just bought. It was by Thomas Har… Read full post »

According to  today's  Daily Beast  the legendary and, yes, old, Bob Dylan was questioned by a twenty-something police officer in New Jersey when someone reported “a scruffy old man acting suspiciously.”  The twenty-something cop had no idea who Dylan was and made him/… Read full post »

Once upon a time, when you went on vacation you cancelled the newspapers, turned on the answering machine, took the cat to the vet and turned off the air conditioner.  You knew that you could, if absolutely necessary access your answering machine remotely (although you probably wouldn’t) a/… Read full post »

 The email from my father’s wife said that he had fallen and broken several ribs.  After a horrific night in the emergency room he was, for reasons unfathomable, sent home.  But the next day the pain was so much and his condition so worsened that he was checked into the hospital.… Read full post »

Anti-Semitism has been a fact of my life for its entirety, from the first time, at age 5 or 6 I was told I was going to hell because I did not believe in Jesus, to the countless times I was called a “stupid Jew,” a kike, a… Read full post »

Salon..com   http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/19/kramer_dirt/index.html       recently ran an article and an interview with the editor of a new book of essays I am included in, called DIRT:  Writers on the Quirks, Habits, and P… Read full post »

                  My younger sister sent me a photo message on my phone: a picture of the latest bouquet of flowers delivered to my mothers rooms at the assisted living residence where she… Read full post »

                     My dad wasn’t around much.  He says he was, says I came home every night for dinner.  Which was true.  When he wasn’t on the road, h/… Read full post »

                Will anyone ever forget the pictures of Lynndie England, looking as though she were gleefully enjoying he torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad during the American occupation of Iraq? … Read full post »

           My daughter Grace came home yesterday with some terrible news.  One of her friends had died. And not just died.  C* had committed suicide.

            I t/… Read full post »