Early Late Youth Gives Way to Middle Middle Age
When I was twenty, I didn’t want to be thirty. When I was forty, I considered fifty a disaster. And now that I’m sixty-seven I don’t want to even think about sixty-seven, let alone sixty-eight.
A Case of the Human Condition: Swing, Lindy, Fast Dancing — My Kind of Crazy
Jon and I spent the weekend at his high school reunion in Southern California. Check out these youtube videos of the dancing from the era.
Why Pray? — Some Thoughts from Karen Armstrong
Why pray? Karen Armstrong, one of my favorite authors, has some answers for the skeptical. Read more.
A Case of the Human Condition: What Happens When You’re Young, Beautiful — and American — in England
By Barbara Falconer Newhall I have a total of three gorgeous, young nieces. One of them, Julie, went to the famous Ascot races in England last year, with astonishing results. Julie thought she was doing most of the people-watching at Ascot that day. But it turns out that some people were watching her. Before she […]
A Case of the Human Condition: Long-Distance Mothering
Peter is fine. His appendix was twice the size of normal. But it’s gone for good.
The Writing Room: Splitting the Infinitive — How to Boldy Go There
“To boldly go where no man has gone before.” Nitpickers and pedants take exception to that stirring old Star Trek slogan. I don’t.
A Case of the Human Condition: Would My Husband Like to Add My Name to His?
Jon and I had been married nearly 12 years. It was time to pop the question again. I had taken his last name as mine. Would he like to add my maiden name to his?
What’s Rhetoric? Let My Two-Year-Old Enlighten You
My daughter Christina discovered the art of rhetoric when she was being weaned from baby bottle to plastic cup. She’d say, “I want milk and I don’t want it in a cup” — an elegant illocutionary statement that usually got her what she wanted, her bottle.
A Case of the Human Condition: Jane Johnston Schoolcraft and the Indian I Wanted to Be
Growing up in Michigan, I read “Hiawatha,” but I was never exposed to the poems and stories of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, a nineteenth-century Ojibway Indian from the Upper Peninsula. I was culturally deprived.
A Case of the Human Condition: When a Young Mother Dies
In the months and years before she died of breast cancer, Beverly Bondy Rose created a safe and loving place for her little daugther and the people around her. Read more.