Shortly after Valentine's Day a friend of my daughter's interviewed me about love. The two are working on a class project, a documentary theater piece. Each person in the class is interviewing three people of three different generations about love. I wanted to be...
Yom Kippur is "The Day of Atonement," the day of saying you're sorry. The whole week leading up to Yom Kippur we're supposed to apologize to people we've wronged. In Jewish thought, God can't forgive you for things you do to other people, only they can do that. On Yom...
It took me a long time to start making my bed. As a child, it was not something required in my house. It was something saved for company, summer camp, and my one year of boarding school. In college, making my "bed," which was really a mattress on the floor, was...
The other day on Facebook, where all life happens now, a friend asked for the definition of a Karen. She was confused because she thought that previously "Karens" were the women lecturing others about face masks and calling the police about non-socially-distancing...
Yesterday, November 8th, was obviously election day. It was also the umpteenth anniversary of my friend Mark's death from AIDS. In many ways, Mark's death was my "first." I knew other people who had died, friends of the family, distant relatives, those beautiful, wild...
I have a theory about how normal people deal with other people's tragedies. I'm not a psychologist, but here it is: Step 1: You hear that a horrible tragedy has befallen someone you don't know. Step 2: You feel a sense of shock and horror. Step 3: You look for a...