FLYING: Confessions of a Free Woman

It seems appropriate to resume writing on a double anniversary.  It has been a full year since my last post, and this week marked four years at my desk job.  Neither one of those things is exactly celebratory, but they do work as a backdrop for today’s ruminations.  I’d like to share with you what […]

I was raised to be an independent woman; to be free and responsible for my own life and to achieve these things through my own work and study. Somehow, in the course of my pursuit of all these things, freedom became the most cherished value of all to me. It acquired several meanings throughout my […]

Dear Friends –I am Executive Producing a new feature film by two absurdly talented young directors, Katherine Nolfi and Andrew Luis. The film is called UPSTATE and it is about about love, friendship, sexuality and sisterhood.Their film just got into the LA Film Festival starting June 17 and we don’t have enough money to finish! […]

            In my country, there is to the mentality that every family has to own the house where it’s living. That’s why, like a lot of other young families, after some years of living in rented flats, we couldn’t rest until we’ve bought a house.
            The “crises” arise during pregnancy. “We have to raise the […]

            This is the most I’ve felt of anything, other than anxiety and stress, in a long time. My dog passed away and I feel like my heart has been ripped out.
            Born on January 25th 1997 my little Toby had 13 years of a fantastic healthy life. He came into […]

Claiming our beauty as women has many, many layers. It’s not just about body acceptance; we must claim the beauty of our minds, too. A few weeks ago a friend was visiting and he asked me a most interesting question. This is a man I have known since high school and our conversations include everything […]

You are completely and totally bonkers.But don’t worry. All the best people are.(From Disney’s Alice in Wonderland)Through the years I’ve been told that I am completely and totally bonkers. Why? Another quote from the Alice and Wonderland film (which I loved!) gives a clue. This, from Alice’s father, “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as […]

Hannah and I took one of our walks again last night. We set out at sunset; now that it’s February, the five o’clock hour comes before the light cedes everything to the dark, and we walked in the last of the shadows up the road toward one of our regular haunts.The Brooktondale cemetery spans the […]

He will not look at me. Me, his wife. Nor her, his daughter. Me, I understand, for I have brought great shame on his honor, his household, his manhood. I know that he will never touch me again even if he chooses to stay. But each day, his visage will fade, the way the blood […]

“It does not profit a man to marry. For what is a woman but an enemy of friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic danger, delectable mischief, a fault in nature, painted with beautiful colors?”
St. John Chrysostom

Sensible, decent Jimmy Carter got it right again. “This view that women are […]

Yesterday, I went to the doctor’s office again to talk about my headaches again, but this is not a story about that. This is a story about what happened afterward.
Armed with a handful of prescriptions that would all supposedly do their parts to ameliorate pain that has plagued my life for three years, I went […]

 I believe that David Brooks is a smart man. I also believe that deep within him lies a belief in Manichaeism, that is, that the world is divided into dark and light, good and evil, and each person must choose his or her side or thereby lose his soul.
More important for Brooks, each nation must […]

Gail Collins’ column today most likely gave Suffragettes, Sappho, and all of our Feminist Foremothers the vapors today.
Seriously.
How else to react to the following:
The health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate contains a provision known as the Bo-Tax — so called because it would levy a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery […]

 I do not know what it is to be a woman in Israel. I cannot pretend to, as I have never been there. I have friends who have lived in Israel, some observant Jews, some not, but other than that, I don’t have much of a clue. Yes, of course, I read things. But I […]

This week marked the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India, in which 162 people were killed, and scores injured. I began a series of articles that mirrored Virginia Quarterly Review’s decision to run a four-part long-form journalism piece that would be exclusively online.The articles, which all-told, totaled 19,000 words, told a stunning tale […]