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Women’s (and Men’s) Work Still Not Done

I don’t think I or any woman I know needs to read The Shriver Report: A Women’s Nation Changes Everything http://www.awomansnation.com/ by Maria Shriver and The Center for American Progress. Although the Report is being highly touted as important on several NBC programs, all the women I know know exactly what our state is: Pretty hectic and too often unrewarded compared to the work we do. Our children and our… Read More »Women’s (and Men’s) Work Still Not Done

Only the Deadly Dull Need Apply

All of you writers and would-be writers who have never been sexually abused by your parents, suffered from domestic assault, been abandoned on a highway somewhere by grandparents when raising you got to be too much; any of you who have never suffered from anorexia or bulimia, are not cancer survivors, who have never had a child addicted to drugs or lost a child before his time; those of you… Read More »Only the Deadly Dull Need Apply

Big News? Women Over 50 Less Likely to Remarry

Okay, perhaps the New York Times article that graced the front page of the Style section recently deserves a little more parsing than that. But really. Like that other scary statistic that turned out to be wrong — remember the one about women over forty being as likely to get hit by a terrorist’s bomb as to marry? That one had women running like banshees to get hitched to anyone… Read More »Big News? Women Over 50 Less Likely to Remarry

I Was That Little Girl Under the Table

It’s not often that television shows speak to my life. Mostly they provide entertainment, escape, and, if I choose wisely, elegant writing and some humor and pathos. Thirtysomething is the last show I recall that hit me where I live: I was the same age as the characters, having children and struggling with issues of motherhood versus work. But now I find myself strangely drawn to Mad Men, a fantasy… Read More »I Was That Little Girl Under the Table

Watching Daddy Die

The email from my father’s wife said that he had fallen and broken several ribs. After a horrific night in the emergency room he was, for reasons unfathomable, sent home. But the next day the pain was so much and his condition so worsened that he was checked into the hospital. Further, the email said, his doctor offered the probability that he might never get out. But knowing that my… Read More »Watching Daddy Die

Bob Dylan is a Scruffy Old Man

According to today’s Daily Beast the legendary and, yes, old, Bob Dylan was questioned by a twenty-something police officer in New Jersey when someone reported “a scruffy old man acting suspiciously.” The twenty-something cop had no idea who Dylan was and made him prove his identification back at his hotel, then called the precinct because the cop still had no idea who Dylan was. This on the “anniversary” of Woodstock,… Read More »Bob Dylan is a Scruffy Old Man

DIRT

Salon..com http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/05/19/kramer_dirt/index.html recently ran an article and an interview with the editor of a new book of essays I am included in, called DIRT: Writers on the Quirks, Habits, and Passions of Keeping House. In the article the writer says that “The most interesting essays in the collection are the ones that show how dirt sifts into the cracks of our closest relationships, standing in for everything that we do… Read More »DIRT

Requiem for the Pontiac

My dad wasn’t around much. He says he was, says I came home every night for dinner. Which was true. When he wasn’t on the road, he came home every night for dinner. He came home, sat in his chair, read the paper, ate dinner, and then—that was it. At the dinner table he sometimes made jokes and teased us. Sometimes the teasing was good natured, sometimes it was merciless.… Read More »Requiem for the Pontiac

In the Garden of the “Luckiest Mother in the World”

My younger sister sent me a photo message on my phone: a picture of the latest bouquet of flowers delivered to my mothers rooms at the assisted living residence where she lives. A riot of sunflowers, carnations, roses, astroemeria, calla lilies—pinks, oranges, yellows, purples. Gorgeous. The florist got it gloriously right. As soon as I got the message, I called. “Perfect,” I said, as soon as my sister answered the… Read More »In the Garden of the “Luckiest Mother in the World”

The New American Witch Hunt

First, there was Senator Charles Grassley’s not-so-funny suggestion that the heads of A.I.G. should commit public suicide, and then in yesterday’s Senate hearing Edward Liddy, the Chairman of A.I.G. detailed the numerous death threats the employees of the company had been getting, some of them quite horrific. Senator Barney Frank asked for the names of those employees getting bonuses, which Liddy offered if there could be assurances of confidentiality which… Read More »The New American Witch Hunt