Mick Jagger is 80!

February, 17, 2024

It was a shock: seeing him recently on the cover of the….    not the Rolling Stone, but the WSJ (Wall Street Journal magazine.) He still has that arrogant/elegant/nasty vibe, but his face! The skin is deeply wrinkled, not like the wrinkles most of us have, but thick, weather-beaten folds and ridges that start between his eyebrows and run all the way down his cheeks to his neck. He colors his hair, wears a bright lavender suit, and appears to have on lipstick, but those elephantine wrinkles! It’s possible to have them softened surgically, so I […]

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Can I Still… ?

December, 16, 2023

For the past few years, when the first snow falls in Boulder, CO, where I live, I ask myself, Can I still ski? Do I still have the strength and stamina to lug the skis, boots and poles around? Do I have the confidence and balance to avoid falling, and if I do, can I get myself upright again? You may have a similar question, as the years trundle by. Can I still … stay up til 1 a.m., drive, color my hair, wear short-sleeve shirts, have great (or at least good) sex?

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AT LAST— The Didion Files !

October, 24, 2023

Let me tell you about this book, because it came close to never being published. I met Joan Didion, one of the most admired writers of our time, when I was 27 and she was 35.  I was an ambitious reporter in New York, and she was an essayist and novelist in Malibu, whose unique voice had not yet become widely known. The sound of her sentences, the rhythm, the voice, made me take in a breath. And her observations! They were original, they rang true, and made me want to know her.

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The Life and Death of a Brilliant Spiritual Teacher

September, 10, 2023

On July 10, 2023, Sally Kempton, who was a shrewd journalist and feminist friend of mine when we were young writers in New York, and who later became a beloved spiritual teacher, died at her home in Carmel Valley, CA.  Her life path was unusual: a brilliant, biting young journalist, “one of the best minds of our generation,” we all said; then a swami ordained by the Hindu guru, Muktananda; then a storied teacher in her own right. I hadn’t seen her in years, but suddenly this week I was thinking strongly about […]

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Half a Safari

March, 17, 2023

It was years in the planning. And it was over in 7 days, when I stumbled and fell onto concrete and had to be medivacked to a hospital in Arusha, Tanzania. But what a week!  I had signed up for a two-week safari in 2020 with Michael Ellils, a naturalist in Northern California who leads “Footloose Forays,” wildlife trips to Africa and South America. The safari was canceled because of Covid, but resumed in 2023. photo by David Shoup It’s expensive and was to have been a birthday present to myself, but when […]

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Hostage to Apple

February, 26, 2022

Nothing makes me feel more anxious and helpless these days than having a tech crisis. When one of my Apple devices stops functioning, I can feel the adrenaline, the panic rising in my chest. I was calmer when a doctor told me he saw a tumor that could be “a problem” in a scan of my brain. It proved to be benign, but I was calmer then, more accepting, than I was when my iPhone stopped working in Kansas City. I was visiting my daughter, the night before flying home, when I plugged […]

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How to Talk to an Anti-Vaxer

November, 30, 2021

William Ury is a grand master at resolving conflicts. Impossible conflicts. Ancient conflicts where the parties have been fighting for so long they believe it’s in their blood and can never be resolved. “And I’ve seen, with my own eyes,” Ury says, “how these kinds of conflicts can shift and transform. I know from experience, from being present, that it is possible.” That’s why, when people ask if he’s an optimist or a pessimist, he says, “I’m a possible-ist. I look for possibilities.”

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My Mother, the Send-Back Queen

July, 27, 2021

I was reluctant, at first, when asked to be a guest on the podcast, Our Mothers Ourselves. Other guests had raved about their mothers’ inspiring qualities and unconditional love. My mother, Alice Davidson, however, was the quintessential Jewish mother—critical, dominant—who never seemed satisfied with what I did or who I was. She was complex: funny, high-spirited, and creative, and she was quick to become angry and hold a grudge. It was not until the end of her life that I was able to appreciate what I’d inherited from her: a love of story-telling, […]

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Is Amazon More Addicting than Cocaine?

March, 13, 2021

I love Amazon. But it’s becoming a guilty love, an addiction. It began as a crush in 1995 when Amazon started selling books online. Then came the Kindle in 2007, and I found that I enjoyed reading books on it, although some of my peers refused to do so. I appreciated that you could order a free sample, read the beginning and then decide if you wanted to buy it. Ninety per cent of the time I did not.

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