I was talking to my friend Tony LoRe the other day, and he was lamenting the issue now facing so many non-profits since the economic meltdown: corporations and individuals withdrawing their support to devastating effect. Tony runs an organization called Youth Mentoring Connection, which partners at-risk youth with both individual...

My sister Chantal is the most fabulous dancer on Earth. When she dances, she enters the music in such a serious way that everyone around her starts to laugh because it's so much fun to watch her. I was in New York recently, visiting with the family when we all...

Juergen Nogai reminds me of Barack Obama -- a sea of calm and dignity amidst all those noisy drops of senatorial Blue Dog egos.

When famed architectural photographer Julius Shulman died two weeks ago, requests to interview his partner of ten years came pouring in, and Juergen Nogai delivered. (Full...

So, did you catch the bit about the "supreme leader" weeping at the end of his speech exhorting Iranians to stop demonstrating and get with the program already, or else? I have not read every single word written on the riveting protests all last week, but I've been following this...

I guess I always knew we were being watched but it gave me the shivers nonetheless when I read in the New York Times Sunday Magazine that the evil ones -- that would be the credit card companies -- had taken up spying on us. We already know that...

In an ingratiating, syrupy sweet voice, the heavily made up woman standing behind the counter of the service desk said, "And, what's your name, dear?" I was picking up the keys to my newly repaired car, and could not believe that weird, happy smile on her face. After giving her...

While doing research for a book, I somehow landed on a radical right wing, racist website, the online version of a magazine whose name I won't mention because I'm a firm believer in not helping unimportant and negative people generate attention just because we talk about them--like the long-legged blonde...

The image featured below is Heart of Erzulie by the artist Killy.

For a long time, on my way to the office, I kept noticing a billboard that read: Ashley Madison. Life is short. Have an affair. What could it be, I wondered? Could it actually be promoting affairs? By...

Don't get me wrong; I'm a fan of Barack Obama. I may even love him -- his intelligence, his even temperament, his fabulous smile, his willingness to make enemies by forcing democrats and republicans to look at each other as humans with differences instead of as despicable aliens from another...

Everywhere I look I see tattoos. Plain brown-wrapped bodies seem to be soooo 20th century. It was hard not to notice during the summer Olympics that the number of tattooed athletes bore an uncanny similarity to the statistics I came upon regarding the phenomenon: 40% of Americans aged 18-40 have...

You would think the "beer buddy" school of politics would have worn thin by now, but the lesson to be learned from the George W. Bush election and presidency has not yet sunk in. Two Los Angeles Times reporters recently wrote personal front-page accounts of their search for...

Passion's been on my mind lately, mostly because I haven't stopped thinking about it since I was 21, when I endured my fiancé's abuse and cruelty -- and by extension his hot and cold displays of "love" -- for three long years. In spite of implicit consent on my part,...

Nothing like being rejected to make you grow. But, I just want to know one thing: How tall do I have to get? I haven't won the Man Booker Prize yet but I've been published by the big boys and by some little guys; so, by all accounts I deserve...

How do republicans keep doing it? They take a nice word like "liberal," pummel it to death with nonsense, and by the time they're done, it becomes a label so awful that politicians trip over themselves running away from it. Same with perfectly pleasant words and concepts like "choice" and...

Quick. What's the first thing that comes to mind when you think about the French? Snob; arrogant; cheese; snails; good food; style; fashion; museums; Paris; Eiffel Tower; Romantic. Am I right? Notice how I didn't include the word "funny?" But, that would be wrong. They are sooooo funny; it's just...

I opened the morning paper one day last week and was greeted with a heartbreaking picture of a grieving couple. Their 19-year-old soldier son had died in Iraq just before his scheduled return. The caption read, "We almost had him home." Today, the Los Angeles Times featured a story about...

For a long time I have had the privilege of being black in America without serious repercussions. I've only been called nigger three times in my life. Once, when I was a kid, and jaywalked, inconveniencing some white guy. Some niggers never learn, he said. I knew it was a...

Hand in hand with the endless stream of global inequities, issues and problems that assault us often comes frustration, despair, helplessness and guilt over the insurmountable odds of being able to make a difference. Marching, signing petitions, writing letters to the editor, joining a campaign, and sending donations to organizations...

When I read that New York's new governor, David Patterson, had had extramarital relations with several women, I didn't know whether to chuckle, laugh, or laugh out loud. Is it becoming any clearer to anyone in this country, and intimacy-driven media that this abnormal tendency to out politicians on their...

It's a commonly held belief that men reason from logic and that women reason from emotion. Male stand-up comedians have it easy. Can't come up with new material? No problem. Just hit 'em with the shtick about how women's minds work; their crazy reasoning; their illogical way of approaching the...