Why I Read The Obits and You Should Too

Morbid? Not really. Deeply curious, ever seeking wisdom about what makes up a life, whenever it ends, I read obituaries. They’re the profiles written past deadline.

Leaving My Body Behind, Just For A While

My preferred world is one of motion, activity, strength, flexibility. I can easily touch my palms to the floor, sometimes my wrists. (Which amazes all the doctors I’ve seen this year because, if one part of you is broken, they seem to think, the rest must be as well.)

Saving Is For Suckers!

I read all the financial press. I’ve read all sorts of investing books, from Andrew Tobias to Suze Orman. I still end up overwhelmed and confused. Like many women, I fear an old age of ramen and a cardboard box under a bridge somewhere.

Do Museums Still Matter?

I recently visited a museum that will soon close – the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas, which opened 30 years ago to celebrate the memory of Walter Liberace, the first pianist to make a highly lucrative career of parading the stage in ostrich feathers and sequins…

You’re Such A Character!

I hate the idea of being famous, which drives millions of people onto reality television so strangers can recognize them. It doesn’t, for most people, pay the bills. It won’t make your partner love you or safeguard your health, the things that matter most to me. You’re just…famous. The appeal totally escapes me.

Can I Trust You?

Who could have imagined that a doctor would deliberately inject you with something dangerous – when their own Hippocratic oath begins with “First, do no harm?” Who could imagine a roommate so viciously homophobic that they’d tape you having gay sex and stream it live?

Getting Used To America

Americans happily blurt out the most private details of their addictions or surgeries or family dramas within minutes  to total strangers — the sort of emotional revelations that, in many other places, are held private for years, or decades, and shared only with intimates.

Breast Cancer Awareness Pink Ribbons Continue to do Nothing for Breast Cancer

The pinkness of this annual drama annoys me. Cancer isn’t cute or cuddly, something to tame and prettify with a new lipstick or lapel ribbon. No amount of feel-good marketing can alter the fact that women are dying daily of this disease and all the millions, if not billions, of dollars already raised and spent to cure them, hasn’t changed this.

Return to High School

I was pimply, shy and didn’t know anyone – and they had all been attending the same area schools together since kindergarten. A group of boys decided to bark at me every day as I walked through the halls, left a dog biscuit on my desk, howled at me for amusement. They quickly gave me an identity I wouldn’t shed for the next two years – Doglin.

Pines, Wind, Water

There are places that bring you back to yourself. My friend’s house at the edge of a cold, clear Ontario lake does this. It is mostly window, a small, tidy shelter she designed and her husband built, filled with her artwork — a cocoon of creativity. Here, the silence is deep and healing, the only sounds water lapping against weathered rock, wind sighing through tall pines, the distant, lazy drone of an airplane, suspended high in the brilliant blue of an empty sky.