My mother thought I walked on water. That never stopped her from correcting whatever transgressions she thought were a step off the sacred path. It had nothing to do with religion, indeed, my mother eschewed any form of religiosity unless it had a social pageant theatrical extension, like getting dressed...

I was always a searcher, an adventurer and liked to see new places -- the more exotic the better. My dad loved to travel, exalted in it. When I took off for my "journey to the East," my search for relevancy, meaning, and knowledge, one side of him wanted to...

When I found myself trying to run over a pigeon on a Los Angeles street, it was time to get out of the business. I am an animal lover. I had rats living in my attic I refused to kill. I do not make a difference between an animal's life...

Laughing at some TV show, book at my side, in bed, early Sunday night, one of my nights alone at home with my aged mom. I have learned to appreciate these nights, to utilize them to unwind, relax, be at peace with myself, and the world.

The house alarm...

My neighbor was beside herself, couldn't believe what she just heard on the news from Diane Sawyer. "What is wrong with this country?" she exclaimed. Then, I'm not going to vote anymore. I am so disgusted.

Lie after lie, slap in the face after slap in the face, public apathy...

Okay now that I have your attention, a pronouncement: President Obama will be re-elected. We are not going back. Don't they know there's no going back. So we didn't get single payer, Guantanamo is still open, Iraq, Afghanistan, the economy -- Rome wasn't built in a day. Anybody who has...

If a picture tells a thousand words we know why photojournalists do what they do: they tell stories with their pictures. The fact that they are adventurers, hooked on living at the edge is not disputed. They put themselves out there for us. They show, tell us what we cannot...

My dog Vicki Noodles has cancer -- melanoma in her mouth. Not good news. We've all been there with a pet. Friends tell me how lucky she was to have found me. What a good life I've given her. She was homeless. I gave her a home, and chicken and...

Robert Easton was a tall imposing man at over six feet tall with his trademark long white hair. He took over a room seemingly before he even entered. Robert Easton looked the 'guru' part, and in fact was a teacher, a guru, and a support to a myriad of acting...

I consider myself a spiritual person. I am not a saint. I don't have a 'holier than thou' attitude. Actually I think I am just like anybody, not better not worse, maybe because I think we are all connected, animals too, maybe express differently at times but at our center,...

The other day I had a technical problem with something online and called an 800 number. I got someone whose English was so precise and proper I immediately knew this wasn't the U.S. I asked where he was based and where he was from -- Delhi, India on both counts....

Lately, both supporters and detractors can't help but poke President Obama on his accomplishments and purported failures, insisting he should have attacked the job situation before health care. Now, obviously, no one wants to take a serious look at policies that were implemented that did just that, like the automotive...

My mom lives with me. She is 96, looks 20 years younger, is vain, super healthy and has no medications of note -- except that at times her mind goes in and out, sometimes in the course of a day, sometimes in an hour, sometimes a minute. Lately she has...

We all want to feel part of something, our families, our friends, our cities, our countries, some, part of the world. Connected to people and places, having a kinship, a camaraderie, a one with all.

There is one sorority or fraternity we dread joining; brotherhoods or sisterhoods that form...

My dad was in a union, my aunts and uncles, relatives, extended family, all staunch union members. It afforded my sister and me, daughters of an immigrant, the opportunity to go to college, to law school. In law school I worked on the legal team for a union's collective bargaining...

The clang of the closing steel door vibrated to my bones. My heart stopped. I looked around at the grim surroundings. Talk about a chilling effect. I was on the other side of justice. Me, the former gung-ho New York prosecutor, was behind bars. A prisoner. Talk about a reversal...

We know nothing is sacred anymore. How else could a book, a movie about ethics, reason, written by a woman who epitomized the American dream, a woman who fled a totalitarian state, who championed individual rights, fall prey to Tea Party propaganda, liberal denigration and other distortions that go on...

"Although I search myself, it's always someone else I see."
--Elton John, "Bernie Taupin"

I didn't know who I was or what I was doing on this planet. Yes, I was making money, living, working, having "fun," but I felt that I was missing something. Something didn't compute, connect,...

Depression, people on the streets, begging, homelessness, the end of the American Dream -- sounds like today. Well, today in the new Ayn Rand movie Atlas Shrugged, Part 1. The timing of the movie couldn't have be better, but the cries of purported Rand supporters for less government couldn't be...

Who has it? Who doesn't? What exactly is it?

The dictionary cites that the origin of "integrity" are the words "entire," "whole," or "complete." So if you are a whole, complete, an entire person, it stands to reason you will have integrity. So are we born with it? Do we...