Twenty years ago, after a 100 days of slaughter, Rwanda’s ethnic war left the country in ruins.  So many men had been killed that women made up 70% of the population.   The boys who grew up during the struggle watched as their mothers faced enormous hardships to feed their famili

The other day, as I entered the dental clinic, I met an acquaintance I hadn’t seen for 15 years. She looked wonderful and as I stared into her deep brown eyes, I remembered she’d once been a bathing suit model. With almost no imagination, one might suppose she still was.  We chat

I read recently that Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, had signed into law the right of a man to beat his wife. (Yahoonews.com) He did it, he explained, because the order was in accordance with Sharia law. Apart for the immorality of using religion as a pretext to abuse women an

Like Samson, Hillary Clinton admits the source of her political power lies in her hair. “If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.”  What is it with women and hair? In the Middle East, they keep it under wraps. In art, we see it entwined around a

I admit it. I’m old and my jowls are sagging, but I still enjoy fashion. In my youth, runway models were celebrities in their own right. Today, actresses seem to have replaced the super models. I’m not surprised. Glamour shines brightest at the nexus between fashion and stardom. T

A friend and I exchanged woes by email this morning. Mine were minor complaints compared to hers. Her job was getting her down. I sympathized, remembering being in a workplace where nothing seemed to go right. Wherever people gather, pain lurks in the crowd. According to Colin McAdam,

“If you do not have a happy-for-now or happily-ever-after ending, you aren’t writing romance. You will let your readers down.” Lynn Lorenz, a romance writer gave that advice to novices at a conference held in Las Vegas last August. While literary authors like Phillip Roth or Mar

Like others, I’ve taken my swipes at Goldman Sachs. (Blog 8/30/13) But after reading Anne Vandermey’s article, “Yes, Goldman Sachs Really is a Great Place to Work,” I came away less sure of my opinion. (Fortune, Feb.3, 14 pgs 97-104). As The author remarks, not only are the co

“How thrilling to let go of old-self images that no longer reflect the real me,” writes Lisa Schwarzbaum in her essay, “Age of Enlightenment.” (More, Feb. 2014, pg. 124) She’s describing her feelings as she disposes of clutter that once passed for mementos. Primary among the

On Facebook I’ve connected with a few students from India, most of them studying to be engineers. When they write, they address me as “mam,” and their concerns are almost exclusively about girls. Most recently, one of them contacted me for advice. He’s in love with a young wom