Here are five common fears about solo traveling - and some honest answers, taken from my website, sololady.com

I'll feel lonely as a solo traveler. Yes, you might. But sometimes you'll be lonelier traveling with others. The worst trips I've taken were with an incompatible traveling companion. (Not only...

When I bought my condo, it came with two toilets in one bathroom. At least that's what I first thought. I wanted to turn the one without a seat into a planter or a fountain or a cat bowl. But I eventually gave up and started using the bidet for...

Most vacations are safe and fun. But especially if you're a female solo traveler, keep in mind these seven safety reminders when booking a room anywhere in the world. Then enjoy yourself!

Make savvy choices. Select a hotel with room-entry only through a main lobby, rather than separate entrances for...

We'll get to the famed Man in Rio who gifted me with good jewelry an hour after we met (24-carat gold, thank you very much). But first, reflections on two trips to that heartbreakingly beautiful and beautifully heartbreaking city. Here are 10 extraordinary elements of the venue for the 2016...

Failure to repent is much worse than sin. One may have sinned for but a moment, but may fail to repent of it moments without number. Chasidic saying, from the book, Day by Day

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews around the world repent for the past year's...

This past summer of rising angst and hate-mongering reminds me of a difficult time in my life when I managed to find peace and strength, by myself, on the edge of the continent. If you are feeling anxious you might consider a time-out for solitude and restoration, as well. Mine...

Want to roam the world with Fido? (Kitty may be tougher; find a good sitter or cattery, as most cats don't enjoy moving around unless it's to a familiar second home, or such.). The Travel Industry Association (TIA) reports that about 15 percent of us travel with pets - around...

It's the flu season and breaking news is that the H1N1 ("Swine Flu") virus can be moderated with one inoculation. But the ever-present UR1HTR virus (also called "hate flu" or "Republican flu") has been spreading rapidly since November, 2008.

Heavily Infected Areas

The hate flu seems to thrive in the...

As I read the obituaries about Edward Kennedy's death, I feel great empathy. My late husband, Chaim Stern, was diagnosed with glioblastoma in July, 2001-- the same type of aggressive tumor that killed the senator. And so I'm moved to post again a tribute to my brave Chaim.

My husband...

Many of us who grew up in the era of Mad Men can look back at similar office experiences.

After watching the first episode of Season Three, I reflected back on two of my own past office situations. Between my marriages, as a rather clueless new single, I dated two...

President Obama says the worst might be over, the market is rising and unemployment has stabilized. But for many, it will be a long-haul back to recovery.

I've had a roller coaster financial life: well-off (early) and scrappy and single (later) and everything in-between. It started in childhood, as my...

The movie Julie & Julia, and my recent trip to Paris, where much of this movie is set, reminded me of how huge a role Julia Child played for those of us who learned to cook in the 1960s and '70s. Her Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volumes One...

Before I tell you how, as a two-year old, I was my daddy's shill, let me tell you a bit about him. Daddy was a "professional gambler," if betting daily on greyhounds and thoroughbreds could be considered a profession rather than an addiction.

His mornings were spent at the...

Anne Frank has been a lifelong obsession for many Jewish women my age. At Nautilus Junior High in Miami Beach, my English teacher, Mrs. Gelber, handed me a paperback book titled Diary of a Young Girl. It was only 10 years after Anne Frank's death in 1945. I was then...

"I had a dream my life would be
So different from the hell I'm living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."

-- from I Dream a Dream, Susan Boyle's chosen song for her audition and finale

I write this as I fly through the night, watching lightning course through thunderheads towering above the dark Caribbean. They seem close, to my right. When the bolts arc through the clouds, for a second or so the sky becomes as blue as at noon. I've seen other lightening shows...

For Mother's Day I was going to write about my toxic, jealous mother who treated me like a younger sister. Or about being a single mom. But I'll leave those for another time, maybe. Instead, my focus is on two mothers, vastly different but both controversial, and right now both...

"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of...

The suddenness of the swine-flu epidemic, and the talk of the very old and the very young, made me think of something I saw a few years ago. I watched a video at the Tate Gallery in London, that massive, former electric plant on the Thames. It was Nantes...

I finally realize the true reward of slogging through hundreds of poems for an MA in English Lit. Irish poet William Butler Yeats' masterful poem "The Second Coming," published in 1920 in post-war Europe, is being quoted often because it presciently captures what is happening today.

This line in particular: