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. …

The recent death of cartoonist/illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé marks the end of an era of great artists who entertained and enlightened us for decades with wry cartoons and countless unforgettable New Yorker covers. The likes of James Thurber, Sempé and a few others won’t be seen again any time soon. But…

First, find an accommodating friend, preferably with a secluded guestroom. I could recommend a retired couple an hour south of San Francisco, but they might not want to be outed. Invite yourself for a sleepover. Sounding overwhelmed and pathetic helps. Leave the car at home. Take the train; no traffic…

On one-of-a-kind strolls through the City By The Bay — Walking to the Volvo shop from my home, about a two-mile journey, I usually go straight down Gough from Japantown. (Coming home after leaving the 14th Street shop it’s uphill all the way and I do a lot of zig-zagging.) This trip I walked Franklin, which brought me face to…

It’s all about religion. Religion, wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Linda Greenhouse in a recent New York Times op ed, is what really drove the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling. The belief that ‘life’ begins at conception and the fetus must be protected at all costs is neither scientific nor philosophically provable…

A short story — (This is one of a collection of short stories set in small-town Virginia in the 1940s, “Marshallville Stories,” recently published and available on Amazon or through FranJohns.net.) The old grandmother always knew. When the little redhead down the street got herself pregnant back in ’37, not even out of high…