The evening I met with the actors who would read my play, I was nervous, as if I were auditioning for a part. The drama requires 5 actors — 2 men and 3 women – so, with the director and me, 7 of us gathered round a table to get acquainted. I’d eaten earlier but the o
Literature has been no more kind to its prostitutes than real life has been. While fallen wives have made memorable heroines — Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina among them — few novels feature the travails of working girls. Fannie Hill and Moll Flanders are the exception
When it comes to inversions, (Blog 8/28/14) — corporate shell games to avoid U. S. taxes — some defenders of the practice tie themselves in knots to excuse unpatriotic behavior. Diana Furchtgott-Roth of Market Watch.com, for example, insists the fault behind this behavio
The war over the price of eBooks between Amazon and the large publishing house, Hachette, still rages. Hanchette wants more money for its books. Amazon wants to charge the public less. Recently, a petition signed by nearly 900 of Hanchette’s most prominent authors appeared in
Yahoo news recently carried an article about a college student who lived in his car during his Freshman year because he couldn’t afford housing. He talked about the embarrassment he faced because of it, but his experience is far from unique. Homelessness is a condition too man
As time grows shorter until my move to the retirement center, I become increasingly nervous. I worry about the ongoing costs over time and how inflation will eat into my savings. Almost everyone shares some worry about money, given our sluggish economy. Much of my anxiety stems
Many years ago, I recall listening to a pundit’s warning on the PBS McNeal-Lehrer Report that a time might come when the world would look back upon the simpler days of the cold war when all the United States had to worry about was Soviet containment. Once the shadow of the Russian
In its “Spotlight” column, Vanity Fair featured two actresses of a certain age who seemed to look better over time. Charlotte Rampling was one of them, a woman whose name has become a verb: To rample — meaning “to render a male helpless with a kind of coldly elusive sens
Many years ago, I was diagnosed with a form of lymphoma for which there was no treatment. At best I was given 5 years to live. To confirm the diagnosis, sample tissues removed from the lump in my body were shipped to medical facilities around the country. The reports came back w
Only a few weeks ago, before school started, the temperature climbed above the hundred mark and turned my thoughts to ice cream. As a child, my mind often wandered in that direction, especially on Saturdays when I’d walked with my mother to the center of town and she’d do a litt