June, 15, 2026
I’d like a banana, I thought this morning as I got up from the breakfast table. Then I noticed a banana skin in the sink. I’d just eaten a banana? I forgot? Really? Ah… welcome to this part of life, when you’re making notes about notes you made to yourself. When you’re drawing a blank on your daughter’s married name. Impossible! Possible. Though the name does come back, by which time you’ve managed to berate yourself for forgetting. I’ve never enjoyed re-reading a book or re-watching a movie. But that’s changed now, perhaps because my memory is less […]
Read MoreDecember, 8, 2025
Every Friday night my friend, Tina, invites a few women to her home to watch a move she’s chosen, on her large screen TV, while her small white Shih Tzu, Tashi, sits at our feet. Last Friday it was Annie Hall with Diane Keaton and Woody Allen, who directed it, almost fifty years ago—1979. Was it really that long ago? The movie was as fresh and funny last Friday as it was in the 1970’s. “La dee da,” says Keaton, looking charming, wearing a men’s vest and tie. Woody, of course, is as […]
Read MoreNovember, 10, 2025
Was it a good idea? Taking my two grand-daughters, 7 and 9, and my daughter-in-law to New York city? My son dislikes the noise and traffic and has no interest in New York, but his wife, Fay, born and raised in China, was eager to visit it for the first time, along with their daughters, Siena and Emma. In school, Siena had been learning about the Statue of Liberty that welcomes immigrants, and Emma, two years younger, was always up for adventure. I’d prepared an itinerary, but Fay had read reports from Chinese […]
Read MoreSeptember, 29, 2025
Last night I sewed a button on one of my favorite shirts. I was surprised at the sense of satisfaction that had given me. The long white shirt with its missing button was one of my favorites, but it had been hanging conspicuously on a hook in my bathroom for months. I had not managed to dig out my sewing kit from a crowded drawer near my bed, then find the spool of white thread that was sitting on the old Singer sewing machine in the back of a downstairs closet, find a […]
Read MoreAugust, 20, 2025
This is Part 3 of my visit to Cuba ten years ago. To read previous parts, click here. After five days in Havana, we take a chartered bus on the rough, two-lane road—the only road—that runs the length of Cuba. A billboard proclaims, “Siempre adelante”—always forward—which seems like cognitive dissonance. A horse-drawn wagon is pulling a flatbed on which a dozen working men are standing up, jammed together, and in the fields, men are cutting cane with machetes. Along the sides of the road they’ve planted a living fence—a continuous row of sharp-thorned […]
Read MoreJuly, 31, 2025
Cleaning out my office, I found this article I wrote ten years ago, after visiting Cuba. It felt new and fresh to me, so I’m posting it for you. Hope you enjoy. GOT MY MOJO BACK IN CUBA Not long ago, I realized I’d come to the age where I’m invisible. When I walk along the street or down the aisle of a restaurant, no one looks at me, especially not men, and if their eyes accidentally do meet mine, they carom away like billiard balls cracking off the table rail. Besides becoming […]
Read MoreJuly, 8, 2025
For many of us these days, the 4th of July is no big deal. But growing up and, later, raising my kids in L.A., it was a primo holiday. Back in the day, my parents, sister and I lived in a duplex on Orange Street, downstairs from my grandparents. Fireworks were banned in L.A., but shortly before the fourth, my father would drive us to nearby Culver City, where it was legal to purchase a giant box of them. At the barbecue our parents hosted, my father grilled shish kabob—chunks of lamb, marinated […]
Read MoreJune, 20, 2025
I’ve just finished reading the first book I wrote, almost fifty years ago, Loose Change, Three Women of the Sixties. I hadn’t looked at it in decades and was nervous I’d find it embarrassing. And dated. To my relief, I was surprised at how smoothly it reads. I especially enjoyed the return, in its pages, to my childhood years in L.A., which was then considered a remote part of the country, “the West.” In the L.A. of my childhood, I knew most of my neighbors. All the kids played together outside on Orange […]
Read MoreMay, 5, 2025
I recently returned to my home in Boulder, CO, after two months in Honolulu, where my sister, Terry, has lived all her adult life. I’ve been spending two of the winter months there for decades, swimming with a mask so I could see the glorious tropical fish. But this was the first time that, returning to my home in Boulder, I could not remember where things were. Especially in the kitchen. I had to pull out every drawer to find the sharp knives. In the course of the past year, my memory has […]
Read More