Fung-Shwa January 6, 2009

I will admit that I am not a big fan of  mystical/New Age/Woo-woo stuff. I have, at various times in my life, suspended my disbelief long enough to check out aromatherapy, I Ching, herbal medicine, Tarot cards, flower remedies and Deepak Chopra’s ideas about eating according to ones body type.  I did like yoga, and [...]

My Old Hair November 30, 2007

For women of a certain age, hair becomes an issue. When I was a child, my hair was cut into a blunt bob until I was old enough to beg for long hair. Despite my ineffectual use of a brush, it was a look that worked for me in elementary school. In high school, I [...]

On Mommy Swaps October 21, 2007

A while back, I was sucked into the lurid world of a Fox “reality” series in which two families trade mothers for a couple of weeks. In order to heighten the drama, the selected families were very different. In the episode I saw, a wealthy suburban family in which the father was a Japanese-American [...]

On The Telephone October 18, 2007

I am not a fan of the “connected” lifestyle. In the same way that I feel perfectly justified in lying on the living room floor until the girl selling magazines stops ringing the doorbell and gets off my porch, I feel that I am permitted to choose whether or not to answer the house phone [...]

True Colors October 8, 2007

Since I was twelve or thirteen, I have been taking quizzes to find out who I really am. When I started, these questionnaires often appeared across from ads for “Love’s Fresh Lemon,” and promised to tell me whether I was “Date Bait or Total Turnoff” based on answers about [...]