It's a left turn off the main drag, past the house with the high stone foundation, up and down a couple of green hills that get greener and shadier. At the dip in the road is the entrance to Riverside Cemetery, headstones spread out on the hills on both sides of… Read full post »

What do I think about Mike Jeffries, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch? I think he's a moron. Why? Because it's easier to sell clothes, an image, an idea to people who are desperately striving to attain an ideal than to those who've already arrived. The trick is to convince the… Read full post »

I handed my little granddaughter one black bra and told her to put it down the laundry chute. Then called to her, "Hey, take this one, too." She waited for me to toss it. "Today is the day we wash all the black bras."

"Ok," she said, opening and slamming the… Read full post »

"We heard you were going to send her back." The school social worker looked at me over her glasses, raising an eyebrow in disapproval. Where had she heard that? Those words had never been spoken, at least not by me. Was she clairvoyant?

Yes, I'd had the thought but but… Read full post »

The feminist struggle could be pretty joyless. I became a mother in the thick of it - in 1973. Should I wear a nursing bra or burn it? That was the question.

Like every movement that seeks equal rights, recognition, and authenticity, feminism took its pendulum way to the outer reaches… Read full post »

This was not what I'd had in mind. My vision was me sitting in a rocker, nursing my beautiful baby, my long hair shielding her little face from the moonlight, Joan Baez singing softly in the background. I thought having a baby would be mellow and sweet. Peaceful. Lovely. That's what… Read full post »

In much of the world, motherhood is an accident, something that happens to women, not something they choose. The accident that is motherhood then takes over a woman's physical being, lives off her body, changes her external life, her relationships with others, and her view of herself. This is an invo… Read full post »

What's your tattoo? What do you put on your arm or your shoulder or the top of your foot?

What's the symbol? The one thing that would have such enduring meaning that you wouldn't mind glancing down at your withered feet to see your tattoo peaking out from your nursing home-issued… Read full post »

 The gist of it is this - it's beautiful and it's crazy.

The mistake is thinking that anything in life is linear. One thing doesn't always lead to another. Life's a collection of events strung together by string someone found in the junk drawer. The most successful negotiator of li… Read full post »

The saltwater was the perfect treatment for the blisters I got from wearing the wrong shoes for a walk on the Old Seven Mile Bridge in the Florida Keys that I had been planning for weeks to mark my 65th birthday.

It is so like me to have one detail… Read full post »

She asked me if I'd take her to the funeral. She said in a text: "Will u take me? I can't get a ride."

So I said, yes, I would drive her. This would be another one of the things that I probably wouldn't put in my report to the people… Read full post »

If I was Jewish, we would be having Shabbat dinner right now. We would be lighting candles and blessing the children. We might sing songs and certainly bless and drink the wine. Gentiles who think Jews have no fun because they don't celebrate Christmas don't know about Shabbat and the hundred… Read full post »

Swearing is liberating. Cursing, using foul language, whatever you want to call it can make a person feel tougher, more powerful. A woman cursing says she could give a s**t about what other people think, she's unaware or uncaring about what's ladylike and what's not. She can go to work, come… Read full post »

What's fair, do you think? One chance? Two? Three strikes and you're out? Say you're a mom who left your five-year old and six-month old baby alone so you could score some heroin on the corner. Should you get another chance? You're addicted, after all, so that has to cloud your… Read full post »

It's enough that they did it first. They didn't have to do it right. Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to be Prime Minister of the UK after elbowing her way through layers of rock hard, calcified male privilege. She went on to establish a catalog of bad public policy. Shirley… Read full post »

Blogosfear: Fear of being talked about or becoming a character in someone's blog s in "When he talked to his friend, he was overwhelmed with blogosfear thinking their conversation would be published the next day in her very popular blog.

Blogosfear was the March 23, 2013, Word of the Day… Read full post »

When Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed 45 years ago today in plain daylight, standing on the balcony of a motel, not hurting anyone, just standing there unarmed, unthreatening, with his colleagues nearby, and a city surrounding him, it was the most unbelievable, reality-altering event since John Ken… Read full post »

Man of the Year, Most Influential Woman, the 10 Best Dressed, the 100 Richest People - there's no shortage of reference guides for who to admire. There are a lot of accomplished people out there. Our little town is full of them. We go to big dinners and the admirable people… Read full post »

I don't know why but all day I've been thinking about Jane.  Two memories collide -- the pungent, overpowering body odor wafting down the hallway that announced her arrival minutes before she appeared in my office and the matter of fact way she cinched up the tablecloth she would often wear… Read full post »

The cynicism about Senator Rob Portman's 'I was lost and now I'm found' moment flows like a mountain river in May. Why now, people ask. Why didn't he decide to support same-sex marriage when he first learned his son was gay? Why is everyone falling all over themselves praising a guy… Read full post »

Eleven years ago, the house we owned in Grand Marais, Michigan, caught fire and blew up.  It was the dead of winter, in the middle of a terrific storm, at the end of a day when the power had gone off and on a dozen times.  Deciding we'd better hightail it,… Read full post »

I was in the parking lot of a youth center where I’d just finished an evaluation meeting when my cell phone rang. My former boss, who probably hadn’t called me on the phone in ten years, tracked me down to tell me that my old boyfriend had died. He had committed… Read full post »

At six o’clock she turned down the stove, picked up the receiver of the yellow phone on the kitchen wall and dialed the number of the place her son was living.

She could hear the guy at the desk yell down the hall, telling her son that his mother was on… Read full post »

It could get crowded in my dining room with those three other women, the mothers of my adopted children. It made things tight bringing food out and clearing the table, struggling to inch past them, the skinny and stout, all with black hair and brown eyes, and the wide cheekbones that… Read full post »

Once upon a time, there was a stringy brown woodchuck who desperately wanted to be big and powerful. His powerful urge to be powerful convinced him to buy a T-Rex costume on Amazon.com which he wore coursing through the woodchuck tunnels at night hoping to impress his neighbors.… Read full post »