thelook.today.msnbc.msn.com 

Vidal Sassoon was perhaps the world’s best-known hair stylist. He created an innovative geometric cut in the 1960s, favored by celebrities, and experimented in other sensual cuts and new products as he branched out from his base in… Read full post »

When you get to a certain age, life can be counted in dog years, when every year takes on the meaning of seven. Things get speeded way up, faster and faster, seasons blending and blurring. So much happens, some of it critical.

Two years ago Bill and I married, but… Read full post »

what's left of me, into the wind .... 

I started out

100 percent.

But I'm losing myself.

Tonsils and adenoids --

T & A.

What are they, anyway?

Yanked from my inner child 

With chocolate ice cream chasers.

The thyroid. A chunk… Read full post »

When I heard about Dick Clark's death I remembered how we all used to rush home from school, drop our books and sit in front of the tv watching the kids from Philly dance close and do the lindy on American Bandstand, the show he hosted five days a week.… Read full post »

www.holocaustresearchproject.org/.../hun.jews.gif

This is Holocaust Remembrance Week, and Yom Hashoah is Thursday, April 19. I want to share a post I offered two years ago -- a heartbreaking personal remembrance. All people who have experienced the horrors of genocide … Read full post »

Hunger is in the air: At the movies, with The Hunger Games. On TV with ads about a War on Hunger, as corporations such as Walmart are recognizing that one in six children in the US goes to bed hungry. And around the world, the percentage is much higher.

Like so… Read full post »

The week-long celebration of  Passover starts Friday night. This year my husband is nursing a detached retina, and I am recouping from some health issues, too.  Because of that I thought I'd share our extraordinary seder from two years ago: one that meant so much to me.  

 … Read full post »

Sermeq Kujalleq, the much-discussed collapsing glacier in Greenland,  from my boat. This is one of the major ice fields of the world, and has been shrinking rapidly. The ice around me seemed frighteningly softened, like ice cream.

(Photos taken by my Austrian travel companion, Katha… Read full post »

I discovered something interesting the other day, maybe already obvious to you, but something that I never thought of before. 

When there are two elements, most of us usually preface our comment by saying “Well, there’s good news and bad news.” And I always used to say it that… Read full post »

Two California men on a gay cruise of the Caribbean were arrested Wednesday in Dominica, where sex between two men is illegal. They were supposedly seen making love on the ship.

This made me furious.

And then I remembered a fun post I had written in 2008 about a gay… Read full post »

As we get older things seem to change faster, and with modern technology they really do.

 I was thinking about the last dozen years and came up with this list in a few minutes. It may seem flip, but each change represents a deeper truth (okay, some deeper than others).… Read full post »

 travel-junkie.com

I try to learn a bit of a country’s language when traveling, and usually get by with workable Spanish, dismal French and laughable Italian, augmented with lots of hand gestures and facial expressions.

But learning even a few words is difficult when… Read full post »

1. Your main trait: Curiosity.

2. The quality you like best in a man: Kindness/open-heartedness.

3. The quality you like best in a woman: Empathy.

4. Your main flaw: Impatience.

5. Last time you cried: Well, tears, last night when I saw the play War Horse on/… Read full post »

Last week a cherished bracelet was stolen right off my wrist in an unusual way, and I'll tell you about it in a minute. But let me put the theft in the context of past losses of all kinds. 

I have a history of losing jewelry: necklaces unlatching, pins unpinning, earrings… Read full post »

Republican Presidential hopeful Rick Santorum recently misrepresented a 1960 speech by President Kennedy. Santorum says that he does not believe in an America where the separation of church and state is “absolute." Kennedy never said that.

Santorum says:

"To say that peop… Read full post »

 The all- purpose, all-male panel that was called by Representative Darrell Issa to speak about contraception issues to the House of Representatives has been deemed to have similar credentials to speak about:

Slavery

How to Fix Menstrual Cramps

Les… Read full post »

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 »