REBELLIOUS THOUGHTS AS MIDNIGHT NEARS The hour was late for me — almost 12 p.m. — when, nearing the end of Haruki Murakami’s book “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” I read the following lines:           “…the absence of fighti

NOW I AM 75 Today, I am 75. As I’ve said many times, while I would love to look like a 21 year-old, I wouldn’t give up what I’ve learned about life for a few less wrinkles.  It’s not a bad trade off, youth for experience. Imagine how you would answer if a fairy godmother were

LABOR – A BRAVE NEW WORLD A friend recently sent me an article about job cuts at the “LA Times.” The newspaper laid off all its freelance book reviewers and shifted some of its regular staffers — one who’d been with the LA Times for 23 years — and made them

LISTENING TO THE HEART BEAT Every time I get a subscription renewal request from one of my ladies magazines, I feel like a middle age woman going through menopause — I should be so young — and think: I’ve got to renew myself, not these publications.  (courtesy: Photobuc

THE INSANITY OF TRUTH In Thomas Mann’s novel “Dr. Faustus” his central character is a talented musician, Adrian Leverkuhn, who elects to contract syphilis, hoping that madness will inspire his creativity and take him beyond the ordinary. During one outbreak of Leverkuhn�

MY LIFE AS AN ARTHRITIC SNAIL Contrary to the opinion of some of my friends who avoid social networks, Facebook isn’t a place where people gather to talk about the number of snails eating their begonias. I’ve learned a good deal more than that from my web friends. (Yahoo Images) R

Just met the girl with the dog in the park this morning. I stopped to compliment her on the love so clearly evident between her and her pet.  She told me she has had the animal for two years and though the dog has had some obedience training, mostly it has become attuned to its owner

TO PAWS IN TRIBUTE I thought about “Old Yeller” and “Lassie” the other day, and how their courage and loyalty stand out. Those novels came to mind as I was finishing my walk in the park. Ahead of me was a young woman with a large dog, a mongrel that looked like

BLOWING BUBBLES Non-fiction author Eli Pariser can sure pick a book title: “The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You.” This writer found a new problem to worry us — because, we all know, bad news sells. This time the trouble is with the World Wide Web. Pariser war

WHAT’S IN A NAME? In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” the heroine asks:           “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose           By any other name would smell as sweet.” (Yahoo Images) She asks a good question and one a writer needs to consider