Being an old person in the tech world that the young have created can be disconcerting, like trying to navigate sand dunes on roller skates. For assistance, I pay one guru to manage my hard drive and storage and two additional gurus to keep me out of bogs in what we lovingly call the

The new beautician at my mother’s retirement center has raised prices for a simple haircut. A clip that previously cost  $17 now costs $20 for a woman and $15.00 for a man. Discrimination of that kind raises my hackles, but, of course, we women aren’t new to it.   Some might arg

During my blog hiatus, so many news items begged for comment, I kept salivating, like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Sticking to a memoir about my foreign travels in the 1960s took discipline. I’m glad I did. I found I had much to learn.  For a start, memoirs are out of fashion. The new g

You could read the newspaper clipping as a feminist version of Good Will Hunting.  After a long day at her job as a Janitor at Trinity College in Ireland, Caitríona Ms. Lally arrived home and, while calming her fretting infant, picked up her phone to hear a stunning announcement. 

In the summer of 1947, I took a walking tour of Boulder Dam with my mother.  That’s when I met my first Texan, an encounter I never forgot.  Though it was hot, maybe 90 degrees, our guide for the afternoon paused above the dam’s large reservoir and asked us to look down.   “

I wrote yesterday of my respect for clear writing, and how often I drowned in the words of clever writers.  No sooner had I put down one edition of Harper’s and took up another than I discovered myself gasping for air a second time.  The new essay was written by Will Self, an auth

While being interviewed on a local talk show, the moderator asked me to name my heroes.  I admit my mind went blank.  Many people I admire.  Some of them are ordinary folk.  Others have names recognized around the world.   I admire Mahatma Gandhi, for example.  Without firing a

“What kind of a woman are you?” Henri Matisse screamed at his model as he stood before his canvass.  He and dozens of other Parisian painters in the 1920s, Chagall, Cocteau and Braque among them, would never find out.  Only Picasso refused to paint Mari Lani, a model who became

If you’ve returned to this blog page more than once, congratulations.  You’re an intelligent reader.  At least, that’s what my computer’s editor says.  When I compose, I’m forever being red flagged for sentences that are too long and paragraphs that are too complex.  So

Late one afternoon, a friend came to visit at the retirement center.  He’s a brainy fellow so our conversations often wander into curious places.  At one point, I recall saying I thought human consciousness might be one way the universe keeps track of itself.  I’d meant it as a