Five years ago, right before her seventy-eighth birthday, my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.  The symptoms had been apparent for several years but alcohol masked some of them… 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 »

        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 »

 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 »

                     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 »

           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 »

First,  there was Senator Charles Grassley’s not-so-funny suggestion that the heads of A.I.G. should commit public suicide, and then  in yesterday’s Senate hearing Edward Liddy, the Chairman of A.I.G. detailed the numerous death threats the employees of the company had been gett/… Read full post »

My parents had an amazing bookshelf.  I went there from the age of twelve and there I first discovered John Updike.  I read Couples, which was far too mature for me  but was a wonderful secret treat (my parents never censored my reading).  I also found J.D. Salinger, and Kurt Vonn… Read full post »

I was in Quiznos the other day (the only place I go for what could be called “fast food”) and the owner, who is an acquaintance of mine, introduced me to a new employee and we got onto the subject of dating—don’t ask, you know how women talk in… Read full post »

I had this admittedly crazy idea to fly up north and fly with my mother back down to my small Virginia town so that she could spend a couple of days with me, see my teenaged daughter whom she hasn’t seen since this summer when we went up to celebrate her… Read full post »