When I was a lad, I was quite impressed by the clever way in which Br’er Rabbit gained freedom from his captor in the old 1946 Disney full-length cartoon flick, “The Song of the South” (since much reviled for its racial stereotypes, thus hardly ever seen anymore). It was the […]

We’ve all been there. We’ve all asked or seen someone ask a woman when she’s due, but she’s not actually pregnant.

As I stood at a New York City courthouse on a winter day in 2011, I knew I was making a good decision. I was marrying my then fiancé, now husband. It was two days before our actual ceremony, and we had trudged way downtown to collect our marriage license. […]

Many of us will sit down with family and friends this Thursday to celebrate Thanksgiving. We have much to be grateful for this year in our region and in our nation. I hope everyone will find the time from their busy schedule to share in the holiday spirit, to give […]

The Salvation Army has a new campaign where it “debunks the myth of LGBT discrimination.”

“Oh, but I don’t believe in ‘conspiracy theories,’” the nervously shaking nebbish replied when someone gently tried to introduce him to a plausible alternative to the official, prevailing wisdom about who killed Kennedy. It is curious, indeed, that the association of the term, “conspiracy theory,” with an automatically derogatory meaning […]

To read Part 1, click here.  My grandmother-in-law lies writhing in pain in her hospital bed. Far from being a meek woman, her dramatics are legendary in my married-into clan. From the way she’s screaming and carrying on, you’d think her pain was inflicted directly by God or Moses, and […]

Amy Bowman’s husband died almost two years ago after a 14 month battle with pancreatic cancer. A single mom with two children to care for, she relied on her husband’s COBRA plan until it ran out, forcing her to try and buy insurance on the open marketplace. After she herself […]

Who among us, conscious enough 50 years ago to remember the day, can resist talking about the assassination of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963? It’s a good thing to talk it over again and again, if only because far too vast a percentage of our population today wasn’t around […]

It’s late 2006. The room is dark, aside from the awkward glare of European wattage streaming through the giant windows of my Moscow hotel suite. I hear the gentle attack of snowflakes trying to beat their way inside. My room, as per usual, is scented from an assortment of candles, […]