January, 15, 2021
Years ago, when I was interviewed by a university professor for an oral history project on the Sixties, he asked, “Who had the greatest influence on your life when you were young—a teacher, book, family member?” Before you read further, please think: when you were in your teens or early twenties, who inspired you? A teacher, friend, musician or poet? Remember what comes up, and please enter it as a response after reading this blog. When I was asked that question, nobody came to mind. No one at all. Until the professor added, […]
Read MoreDecember, 2, 2020
He was 18, fit, trained, and pumped up to fight, when he landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Vietnam in 1967. First thing he saw was a pile of 40 dead bodies in bags, stacked beside a chopper like a cord of wood. Moments later, he and the other recruits were fired on. “I’d never been shot at in my life,” the man recalled. “That’s when it hit home—it’s goddam war.” Fifty years later, gray, wrinkled, and overweight, he was returning to Vietnam on an Old Glory Honor Flight. The countryside […]
Read MoreSeptember, 8, 2020
In March, when the stay-at-home order came down with a thud, I found myself in a relationship that quickly became more intense and consuming than any I’d had for a decade. I’d recently met a man on a dating site who seemed “possible,” if not a perfect match. In other times, we might have had a few dates and found a reason to drift away. But this was dating in the time of Covid. It was as if we were the only two people on an island. We looked for common interests, shared […]
Read MoreJune, 9, 2020
“Do you have a tattoo?” the hair stylist, Jennifer, asked me. Was she crazy? She was 26, with blue eyes and dark hair falling in waves down her back. And she had a delicate tattoo starting at the nape of her neck and disappearing down the front of her black t-strap dress. I’d never been asked that before. My generation didn’t get tattoos, I said, although I’d known one woman and one man who did, and regretted it. I was not in Kansas anymore. I was in a balayage salon. I’d seen signs […]
Read MoreMarch, 10, 2020
Two days after the memorial service for Ram Dass in Maui, I drove with my sister and a friend down the bumpy road to the house where he’d lived for the past 12 years. We knocked on the door and a young man with a long dark ponytail opened it. He was one of the “super monkeys”—young people who’d volunteered to care for Ram Dass, who’d been partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair after a stroke in 1977. Ram Dass and his guru had revered the Hindu monkey God, Hanuman, said to […]
Read MoreJanuary, 20, 2020
I’ve known and been writing about Ram Dass, who died December 22, since the ‘70’s, when I read Be Here Now and decided: I have to meet this man. I was in my 20s, an agnostic, having success with my writing, and miserable. “Woe is me,” was my mantra, inherited from my Hungarian grandmother. My husband would counter: “Woe is NOT you.” It was a time when all around me, young people were lighting out for the spiritual territory, becoming vegetarians, learning to meditate and chant, and running to Chinatown to practice Tai […]
Read MoreDecember, 3, 2019
Medium, a popular website, asked me to write about “How to Talk to an Old Person.” At first I thought it was about talking to people older than I — people in their eighties or nineties. Then it landed with a thud: the old person — that’s me. But I don’t feel old. I feel like I’m 50. When I was 40, I felt like I was 28. You always feel younger inside than your chronological age, but both ages are moving upward, in tandem. The “I” — the interior being that you […]
Read MoreOctober, 17, 2019
In July, when I told friends I was taking a tour of Ukraine and Moldova, they were baffled. “Why?” they asked. It sounded like vacationing in lower Slobovia. We did not know—at that exact time in July—that President Trump was pressuring Ukraine’s President Zelensky to dig up dirt about Vice President Biden, nor that in a short time, Ukraine would be leading the world news. So why, indeed, was I going? Well, my father’s parents came from Odessa, which was then part of Russia though now it’s in Ukraine. I was curious to […]
Read MoreJuly, 5, 2019
This is Part 2. To read Part 1 click here. I don’t know how or when I got home. I remember driving my black Beetle out through the tight-packed crowds. This time, though, without police escorts, I was tense and anxious, the beetle crawling forward as we waited for people in front of the bumper to move aside. The only other memory I have is that we were nearly out of gas, but all the gas stations in a 60-mile radius were closed. Pulling into one, I inserted a hose into my gas tank, […]
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