IF THERE IS TIME… On November 13, 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from 7 years of house arrest in Burma. This is not the first time the government has imprisoned this frail looking woman but none of her confinements seem to have dampened her resolve to bring democracy to her cou

WE HAVE MET THE ENEMY AND IT IS US — (Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly, 1913-73)    The last election revealed a country divided against itself with no vision of how to pull together. One group wants to level the economic playing field to create greater opportunity for all and

OLD WINE IN NEW BOTTLES After years of reading women’s magazines I have come upon one constant. In every issue there will be one article about the following: breast cancer; how to organize one’s house or how to lose weight. Somewhere, it must be written that if none of these featu

MY MENTOR MRS. MALAPROP The other day, my mother, who is 94, insisted I once had a beautiful black dog which she inadvertently allowed to run into the street where it was killed by a passing car. Apparently, she still felt remorse for a loss that was only part true.  Once I did give

THE ART OF LEAVING One of my students replied to a blog the other day (Blog 11/2/10) to say he wasn’t concerned about the indignities that come with age. He was maddened by the thought of one day being told “to leave the party and don’t come back.” I understand his point of vi

ON BEING IDLE I went out this morning with my pitch fork to remove the leaves from the clogged street drain at the corner of my block. No one else bothers. Most of the people around me are renters, so I accept the responsibility and prefer to do the job now rather than wait until afte

A QUEEN WILL NEVER BE KING Recently, one of my magazines reported that Angelina Jolie will take the part of Cleopatra in an upcoming film based on a biography written by Stacy Schiff.  Apparently the writer pieced together her information from documents left behind by the queen’s e

“THE TROUBLE WITH MAN IS MAN,” James Thurber I miss James Thurber (1894-1961), a contributor to the New Yorker, cartoonist and one of America’s great humorists, along with Mark Twain and Will Rogers. He had an eye for the silliness in human nature, especially when people were ta

SERIOUS THOUGHTS ON A SERIOUS QUESTION I had lunch the other day with a friend who posed an interesting question: If I’d been given a choice to be born or not to be born what would I have chosen? I paused to think. Of course, one has to exist to be able to ponder the notion which ma

A LETTER TO MYSELF THIRTY YEARS INTO THE PAST Sitting down to lunch yesterday, I pulled out one of my magazines and read an article about the power of letter writing…not e-mails but the pen to paper kind.  One of the stories was about a frazzled, 32 year-old pregnant mother of two