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. …

You can do this! Cloud-hugging (instructions below) benefits all of humankind. Hug A Cloud Day came about because this is the 250th anniversary of the birth of English chemist/amateur meteorologist Luke Howard, the man who named clouds. The above puffy/fluffy ones are cumulus — if I’m not mistaken — from…

Plan ahead, and have a little fun — Self-publishing, for most of my very long writer’s life, was simply not done. From just about every viewpoint — that of fellow writers, agents, librarians, commercial publishers and the general public — the self-published book was something of vanity at best and embarrassment at worst. No more. My recently released…

Today’s random nutritional advice — Dietary doomsday may be upon us. For instance, how’s the eicosapentaenoic acid? And should we be REALLY worried about it? There’s food — as in breakfast, lunch, dinner, nosh — and there’s Supplement. I grew up on meat & potatoes plus a few vegetables, old-fashioned stuff you cook and eat…

A 3-day Getaway trip that’s all about the journey. You’ve gotta love Scenic-Route trains. Or maybe you don’t if you’re some lumpy impassive immovable home-bound sedentary, stick-in-the-mud grump, and bless your heart. But I love trains.