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...

Last January the Craft and Folk Art Museum in Los Angeles hosted an exhibit I co-curated, which looked at the ways that different cultures approach the healing process. (I wrote about it then on Huffpost. Back in 2006, when first pondering how best to structure the exhibit, we'd decided...

On a recent errand to buy much needed jewelry-making supplies I carefully inspected the street for the shop I'd visited many times before. I knew it was two to three blocks east of Fairfax Avenue on Beverly Blvd., right next to a gas station. I was keeping an eye out...

I just received a Season's Greetings card in the mail, and I'm not talking Halloween or Day of the Dead season either. I feel like sending it back with a note saying, "You're kidding, right?" Oh, PLEASE! It's not that I don't look forward to that avalanche of warm wishes...

When I meet people who tell me that they check their email once a month, or worse, don't do email, I say in my most sarcastic tone, "Oh, you're one of those." They're so annoying (Jesus, now I have to call them when I need them.). Still, I hate technology....

A rare, recent interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal by Margaret Prescod on Pacifica Radio (KPFK-FM in Los Angeles) gave me pause. Happiness has been eagerly reflected upon by many on HuffPost when Dr. Mona Ackerman's column premiered on the site. I read through some of the comments and thought...

To: The People who Invented Passwords


First, a note: Hello, my name is Rome. The last time I wrote a letter and had it posted on huffpo, some people wondered how a dog could do that. Just to explain: my owner, Carine Fabius, and...

I swear, the minute I get back to L.A., I'm taking a sledgehammer to the walls in our house. Rome's got it going on in the ruins department. No words can describe the magnificence and preservation of old Roma. I'm still trying to scrape my jaw off the ground. I...

To Leaders and shareholders of: The Insurance Industry
The Pharmaceutical Industry
The Credit Card a/ka/ Banking Industry
The United States Government


I won't start with the trite and obligatory denials of pervasive beliefs surrounding pit bulls. Regardless of what we do with...

Waiting to board our flight for Barcelona I spotted a young Orthodox Jewish man at LAX and laughed to myself, hasn't anyone told them to comb out their hair once they take off their curlers? Then I turned and noticed a blond woman in her thirties. She was wearing what...

Recently, after pulling a glass pan out of the oven, I set it down in the sink and turned the cold-water faucet on to get a head-start on the sticky stuff, and KABOOM! The thing exploded into a million shards of glass, causing my cat to go into flight or...

There I was, flogging my book at a trade show, dressed in my feminist personality --meaning whatever externally but liberated and independent internally-- when two women whom I judged to be in their late twenties to early thirties stopped by my booth. One of them nudged the other, pointed to...

A few days ago my mother called from Haiti to tell me that according to my horoscope, on that very day someone, somewhere would make me an offer that would change my life! I happily waited for my soon-to-come, potentially life-altering proposition; but by the end of the day, the...