Observations of an Octogenarian Optimist — 1 — Start positive. Finding one hopeful thing to focus on can kick-start anybody’s day, especially when there’s not a lot of hopeful going around. Finders keepers. 2 — Pay attention to Mother Nature. The planet needs help: turn off the water, turn the thermostat down if it’s winter and…

The sky is falling! Breaking news! Our fragile democracy in peril!! Life still feels shaky. Even without those constant, frenetic tweets threatening to alter the course of world events in moments, truth competes with fake news. Long-established rights and laws are questioned — or disappear before our eyes. …

This essay appears on the blog page of End of Life Choices CA, a nonprofit which I am proud to serve as a volunteer and board member. Perhaps you’ll visit the site, or at least find a little food for thought here. When is being comfortable and pain-free not a…

Nearly 70 years ago I survived an amateur abortion. On a kitchen table in a drab house in a down-at-the-heels neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. On a dreary February morning, the loneliest day of my life. …

Several weeks ago I lost the last of my three older sisters. Condolences are still coming in almost every day via calls and notes and emails. …

Maybe we could learn something from the microstates — The above postcard recently arrived from my world-traveler grandson with the opening line: “Continuing the tradition of sending you postcards from only the world’s finest microstates . . .” Microstates? Who knew? Certainly not this grandmother. So I went straight to the internet. What I learned led me to re-think…

The digital age is coming for your albums — Once upon a time one could take a photo, send it to grandma and have it proudly displayed on her refrigerator or bulletin board. Maybe even pasted lovingly into an album to pass around during family gatherings, or framed for a corner-table display. That is so yesterday. Today’s photos want…

The case of the forbidden hot dog — We were all trapped. In our own homes, sometimes in hotel rooms a continent away. In the worst-case scenarios of hospital rooms, more than a million Americans were trapped and condemned to die without so much as a friend or loved one to hold their hand. Covid had swooped in…