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I read an article the other day entitled “25 Dying Professions to Avoid”. Journalism was one of them. For people in my profession, that disturbing headline was accurate in more ways than one. Reader circulation has dropped for 17 straight years, and Sunday circulation of U.S. newspapers is at its lowest level since 1945. The…

I still believe Anita Hill. I believe Christine Blasey Ford. Each and every one of my female friends also believe these brave women. Truly, as a colleague of mine said the other day, these are times that try women’s souls. And so, later this month, for the 27th year in a row, several hundred women…

The promotions have already started for Captain Marvel, a live-action film featuring the fictional female superhero from Marvel Comics that will be released in March. Apparently, the smashing popularity of the Wonder Woman blockbuster last year convinced movie moguls a female superhero can, indeed, carry a movie by herself. The producers have even cast Brie…

I am a “seasoned adult,” which, in lifelong learning parlance, means I am over 50. And, I want to “thrive in life’s second half,” as the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at the University of North Carolina-Asheville so aptly puts it. But it looks like I am on my own. Columbia has no large, comprehensive,…

Perhaps Thomas Wolfe was wrong. Maybe you can go home again. Last month I travelled to the Detroit area, where I grew up, for a nephew’s wedding. And lo and behold, I rediscovered the city of many happy childhood memories, but a city that had been afflicted with poverty, crime, and blight since the 1967…

My youngest granddaughter, Sylvie, gave me a sneak preview last week of her gift to her mother for Mother’s Day. It was a charming booklet, hand-drawn in Sylvie’s first-grade classroom, declaring her love for her mom and featuring nearly a dozen “coupons” that Jessica could “cash in” over the coming months. “I will do the…

What pops into your head when someone mentions Iceland, that beautiful island nation in the North Atlantic? That it’s a land of creeping glaciers, erupting volcanoes, spitting geysers, and snowy mountains? That it’s a place that is increasingly popular today as a tourist destination? All true, but that’s not all there is to know about…

And so, will our children finally lead us out of the wilderness of gun violence, which is literally slaughtering our young people before our eyes? Have we finally reached a historic tipping point? Will we no longer be forced to listen to our feckless politicians, who yet again, offer their “thoughts and prayers” after another…

The #MeToo movement that erupted in Hollywood last fall and then exploded nationwide shows no signs of diminishing. It is, in fact, continuing to mushroom. In November 2017, 700,000 female farmworkers published an open letter saying sexual harassment and assault was a “reality we know far too well.” In mid-December, entertainment moguls— reeling from a…

To be a “flâneur” in 19th-century Paris, first of all, one had to be male. From the French verb “flâner,” a “flâneur” was “one who wanders aimlessly.” There was no feminine form of this noun. Such a dandy gentleman, says Lauren Elkin in her new book, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City, was “an idler, a…