Recently I took my mother to see tap star Savion Glover at our local performing arts center. The hall was packed, mostly with children whose parents had brought them to see the legendary dancer. Predominant in the crowd were students from inner-city performing arts schools. During intermission my mother and I went to the concession stand, where candy was on…
I left them quite intentionally, my blue-collar family, but now I can look back with great appreciation. They scraped together the money that my private-college scholarship didn’t cover, probably not understanding that it meant I would leave their world for one they would never enter—the reward and punishment of a good education. Decades later, I’ve learned to fake it, to…
Ever go to bed with the name of someone or something on the tip of your tongue? You just can’t quite remember it. Then you wake up the next morning, and bang! Mystery solved. This often happens to me after I watch an old movie on TCM, the Turner Classic Movies cable station. I’ll recognize an actor from the 1930s,…
Second Acts is a series of interviews with interesting people who discovered new pathways midway through their lives. I discovered Rita Golden Gelman when a friend sent me a copy of her book Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World (Broadway Books, 2002). It is her account of how, on the verge of a divorce, she shunned convention, sold…
Nelson Mandela enjoyed such a long twilight that it’s easy to forget what a threatening figure he once cut—not just in South Africa but in the United States, where he was routinely condemned as a Communist terrorist. In 1985 William F. Buckley wrote: “where Mandela belongs…is precisely where he is: in jail.” Mandela made no bones about being a revolutionary;…
The Russians have a saying: Work is not a wolf; it will not go back into the forest. In other words, don’t work so hard, because work will always be there. Yet we are often at odds with our work lives and out of balance from the stresses and complexities of earning a living. Office politics can be exhausting, and…
I’m at one end of the couch, my 88-year-old father at the other in the living room of his condo in Fountain Hills, Arizona. We could easily pass for strangers, but not because of our limited contact since he moved here from New Jersey 28 years ago. Encroaching dementia has estranged my father from me as well as from himself.…
When I start to get overwhelmed and anxious, I have found that stepping out of my overscheduled life for a “haiku walk” can rewire my day. Traditionally, Japanese haiku walks are called gingkos, named after the tree, and are held in a place of historical or cultural significance or in an area of natural beauty. I live in Moscow, Russia,…
I’m no etymologist, but thanks to the magic of the Internet I can pretend to be one. I have learned that in many languages—Old French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Lithuanian, and even Sanskrit—the root of the word grace is linked to the word for thanks, or gratitude. And so to keep from getting lost in the business of Thanksgiving—the overcrowded supermarket…
