Small

I’m not a social media user. In fact, I tend to avoid them. My age is partly to blame. My generation is the telephone generation. While our parents used the telephone sparingly, my friends and I couldn’t get enough of it. My high school boyfriend …

Aquatic Park in Berkeley is not one of my favorite places for a walk. While it might appear serene and picturesque from a distance–with its wide stripe of water and green borders–it’s a bit seedy and run down up close, its walkways muddy and often …

Many of us have been feeling helpless for some time. For some of us, feeling out of control crept in shortly after the 2016 election. For those kind souls, the feeling intensified with the arrival of Covid. Now, Covid’s persistence and rising numbers have spread—and …

I’ve worked hard during Covid to keep my spirits up, but have to admit that lately I’ve been experiencing a lot of sameness in my life. While pre-Covid, each day was different from the last—lunch with a friend one day, a hike with another the …

I’m feeling particularly happy these days, thanks to refinancing my house. Not because I’ll be saving money every month–although of course I’m pleased about that. For an unexpected but related outcome. If you’ve ever refinanced your home, you know how frustrating and tedious the process …

So much negativity swirls around us these days. First there’s Covid and sheltering in place, which not only creates an atmosphere of threat weighing on each of us individually and all of us collectively, but severely limits our activities. Even a trip to the grocery …

It’s been a long time since I’ve read to my granddaughters. When they were very little, we spent a great deal of time with books, gazing at them, turning pages, exclaiming. And I read, but not for very long continuously. As they got older and …

Imagine the setting: among the redwoods, on Jonah’s huge deck, blue sky, the sun bright, a gentle breeze. Jonah and I sitting in Adirondack chairs, Amelie on Jonah’s lap, her lithe nine-year-old body softening into his chest. The three of us are talking, the others—Poppy, …

I hear many stories about friends reconnecting during—and because of—Covid. Isolation gives all of us more time to think and to reach out to people who were once important to us but with whom we’ve lost contact. It also offers us the space to appreciate …